According to Sigmund Freud, “the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known by the old and long familiar” (825). In Robert Hayden's poem, The Diver, the strangeness grips the reader as the speaker descends further into the depths of the sea and into the unconscious. Freud's use of the uncanny evokes fear and uncertainty in the reader as he delves deeper into the unconscious. Hayden uses alliteration to play with repression and transforms familiar scenes into unfamiliar ones to emphasize swimming in and out of the conscious and unconscious mind. When reading the poem The Diver by Robert Hayden, the reader is immediately thrown into the unknown. After a few lines of the poem, the reader can begin to understand that we are underwater. The repetition of sound causes different feelings of uncertainty and fear as the reader digs deeper into the poem. "Bryozoan moss/fuzzy, obscured/metal..." (Hayden 3). The r's repeated in a fuzzy, obscured manner create a foggy sensation of the darkness of the water that the speaker experiences. Fog is a feeling of repression that tries to force its way out of the mind and into consciousness Hayden continues to use alliteration with the sounds F and S. Although they are different letters, they make the same sound. which causes confusion, but an acceptance of death. “Yet in languor/frenzy I struggled, while an icy man fought/sleep desiring to sleep;/struggled against/the arms of nullification that/m 'surrounded suddenly...” (Hayden 4) The use of sound in the last six lines of the poem makes the reader feel the need for air and the fear of death “Wish reflex?/Breaking breaths. /bells? I swam from/the ship somehow; /somehow began/the measured increase” (Hayden 4). The R sound that begins is that of swimming in water. The B sound that continues right after in “fragile belling” is the puff of air, and finally, the S sounds that finish the line creating a feeling of softness. As if the reader might not get out in time, even though the lines say the speaker actually escapes the ship. The fear that alliteration evokes in the reader is the unconscious. The deep inner thoughts that no one wants to exploit. The speaker accepts the idea of ​​death in the ocean through his subconscious, but his conscious mind tries to push it away and begin the "measured climb" (Hayden 4) towards the world.