The Boys in the Boat: Alliteration 2 key examples

While alliteration typically involves extensive repetition, in the above quotation Brown uses alliteration twice while listing four professions: first with “banker or a baker,” then with “homemaker or homeless.” This instance of alliteration connects otherwise disparate professions, illustrating the universal suffering of the working class during the Great Depression. Indeed, a homemaker is definitionally different from being homeless—a homemaker must have a home to tend to—but the alliterative juxtaposition by Brown makes the two seem more similar than they are different. During the Great Depression, all people suffered. Many homemakers became homeless, and both bankers and bakers became destitute. 

The Boys in the Boat is a story of nine individuals coming together through the shared suffering of rowing practice to form one crew. Early in the story, Brown suggests through alliteration that the country's working class was more alike than they were different, helping the reader relate to Rantz and his teammates while underscoring what made the 1936 gold medal-winning crew representative of the country as a whole.

There is an alliterative repetition of the /w/ sound, with “widest,” “winds,” “white,” “waves,” and “wildly” all used in two brief sentences. This alliteration mimics the relentless chop Rantz and his teammates must row through, with seemingly never-ending waves as constant as the /w/ sound itself. In fact, all of the words beginning with /w/ describe the wind or the water, either directly or tangentially.

At the same time, Brown paints a vivid picture of waves overwhelming the small American flag fixed onto the foredeck. The image of an American flag battered by waves is indicative of the current battle facing the American rowers, who must fight through poor rowing conditions at the race's outset. Furthermore, the rough water facing the Americans is partially a product of the lane assignment, which was the inverse of the standard procedure due to German and Italian machinations. In rowing, the fastest crews in the preliminary races receive the fastest lanes in the final race, with the slowest crews in the preliminary races receiving the slower, less-protected lanes. In a subversion of standard procedure, the Americans, despite posting the fastest time in the preliminary races, received the least protected lane in the finals. The visual imagery of the American flag battered by the waves thus represents the American crew's battle against the machinations of Germany and Italy, as well as the need to overcome these mounting geopolitical tensions in order to win the race and achieve a symbolic victory of broader significance.