Imagination In Shel Silverstein's Where The Sidewalk Ends

Imagination can take you anywhere, and see beauty in unlikely places. Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends” takes the reader on a short, but poignant journey through the poem, and leaves the reader, somewhat expectedly, at the end of the sidewalk. Though it sounds like a very boring location, Silverstein unexpectedly transforms the end of the sidewalk into a rift in reality that contains compelling impossibilities, and he encourages everyone to see it for themselves. At first the end of the sidewalk seems to be a literal place, but Silverstein defies expectations by describing a scene that could only occur at the end of the sidewalk, and not reality. Actually, even though he begins by describing a physical location for the end of the
If the place at the end of the sidewalk seemed an enticing heaven, the place outside of the sidewalk’s end is hell. Here there is “smoke”, not “wind”, and the first color mentioned is “black” as opposed to “white”. There are “pits” where an ironic “asphalt flower” grows, since nothing can really grow in asphalt; no life can be produced, and no beauty can be found. The mention of asphalt and black smoke indicates that the poem’s reality entails industrialism, and unexpectedly, Silverstein describes this place very realistically, which contrasts with the unrealistic twists that the place at the end of the sidewalk entails. And so, with such an unappealing reality, who wouldn’t want to journey to the sidewalk’s end and experience a purer world? To answer that question, Silverstein encourages everyone, “us”, to walk to the end of the sidewalk. There’s an interesting emphasis on walking in a “measured and slow” manner, and such descriptors are associated with old people, or adults; once the “chalk-white” arrows are mentioned, we get a suspicion regarding who is leading us to this place at the end of the