The document uses various literary devices such as similes, analogies, imagery, and motifs to compare climbing trees as a child to climbing the "ladders in the education forest" as an adult. As a child, climbing trees provided thrills and adventures despite inevitable scrapes, but parents would clean wounds. Now, the narrator climbs ladders as a metaphor for progressing in education, hoping to succeed and feel the same thrill as when climbing trees, but on an even higher level.

8. Scrapes and Ladders 1. we used to climb trees scrapes like hardships were inevitable, (simile) carefully cleaned by parents wiping the troublesome tiny tears (alliteration) it supplied enchantment a thrill being on top of the world hearing the buzz of the bees (onomatopoeia) ready to see what tomorrow would bring. 2. today we don’t climb trees we climb ladders ladders in the education forest (symbol) trying our best to come out on top of the rest we may acquire scuffs and scars but once we succeed we have the same thrill as when we scaled those trees but today we are higher than the trees we climbed so long ago. (rhyme)