Shel Silverstein Poem Answers

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein.
1) The message conveyed is that grown ups usually don't pay attention to the old nor the young, despite their repeated attempts to seek attention. Such human behaviour, plus humour, conveys the main underlying message.
2) Shel Silverstein used repetition in "I do that too" , to enhan ce the attentions that it is a commmon occurance in such human behaviour, and gives a tactile sense when the old man writes " wrinkled old hand" to give a sense of realism. The tone changes when the boy "whispered" then "said". Sounding out different tones differentiate the tune to bring out the message clearly, Silverstein manages well in enticing us.

Messy Room by Shel Silverstein
1) Yes, it is barely difficult to recognize your own room, but the degree of it being messy is so surreal that the persona forgets his room and labels it "familiar". Shel describres everything specifically , and the persona blames the owner of the room , which turns out to be him. Such humour!
2)It highlights the normal, stereotypical behaviour that humans are messy, not-organised, and are not ashamed of themselves. It highlights that humans normally unknowingly criticize themselves when they do not know it.

Cloony The Clown
1) By trying his best to be funny , Cloony the Clown just could not exhilarate his audience at all. Instead, they fell asleep , or showed signs of boredom and dissatisfaction. But when Cloony confided and told his tale of woe, everybody burst in laughter. The objective of Cloony, which was to entertain people as much as he could, was unknowingly achieved in a ironic way- by the tell tale of his woes. Cloony had managed an accidental objective and not a fulfilling and proper one.
2)Normally, when us humans, try to entertain people, it may end up in a distinct failure. However this failure is ironically the entertainment for them. Such unexpected entertainment out of failure does not give us a sense of achievement, but however demoralizes us as our objective was fulfilled by our failure and indoctrinates us that it is impossible to entertain them anymore. Thus being labelled as a harsh reality.
3) The poet uses rhymes to pace the poem fast, so the reader would want to read more-- basically a net for attention. And conveying messages, any message, requires precise attention. The poet uses irony to entice the reader into reading more, as the irony was introduced at the end of the poem when Cloony shouted " THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT- I'M FUNNY JUST BY ACCIDENT" . The poet also briefly describes Cloony to make it realistic, that we are in it. To get a more experiential feeling of the message.