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In this poem, “On the Subway”, written by Sharon Olds brings two worlds into proximity. We will identify the contrast that develops both portraits in the poem and discuss the insights the narrator comes to because of the experience. The author refers to several literary techniques as tone, poetic devices, imagery, and organization. The poem talks about a historical view based on black and white skin. It positions the two worlds the point of view of a black skinned and a white skinned. The boy is described as having a casual cold look for a mugger and alert under the hooded lids. On the other hand, based on his appearance the white skinned person felt threatened by the black boy. She was frightened that he could take her coat, brief case, and
In the article, “A Letter My Son,” Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes both ethical and pathetic appeal to address his audience in a personable manner. The purpose of this article is to enlighten the audience, and in particular his son, on what it looks like, feels like, and means to be encompassed in his black body through a series of personal anecdotes and self-reflection on what it means to be black. In comparison, Coates goes a step further and analyzes how a black body moves and is perceived in a world that is centered on whiteness. This is established in the first half of the text when the author states that,“white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence,”
Ever since the abolition of slavery in the United States, America has been an ever-evolving nation, but it cannot permanently erase the imprint prejudice has left. The realities of a ‘post-race world’ include the acts of everyday racism – those off-handed remarks, glances, implied judgments –which flourish in a place where explicit acts of discrimination have been outlawed. It has become a wound that leaves a scar on every generation, where all have felt what Rankine had showcased the words in Ligon’s art, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background” (53). Furthermore, her book works in constant concert with itself as seen in the setting of the drugstore as a man cuts in front of the speaker saying, “Oh my god, I didn’t see you./ You must be in a hurry, you offer./ No, no, no, I really didn’t see you” (77). Particularly troublesome to the reader, as the man’s initial alarm, containing an assumed sense of fear, immediately changing tone to overtly insistent over what should be an accidental mistake. It is in these moments that meaning becomes complex and attention is heightened, illuminating everyday prejudice. Thus, her use of the second person instigates curiosity, ultimately reaching its motive of self-reflections, when juxtaposed with the other pieces in
In conclusion, the poem “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds discusses the insights of a woman on a subway. The woman feels somewhat threatened by the boy sitting across her. The author of the poem utilizes tone, metaphor, and imagery to give prominence to the contrasts between the man and
Ethnic group is a settled mannerism for many people during their lives. Both Zora Neale Hurston, author of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me; and Brent Staples, author of “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space,” realize that their life will be influenced when they are black; however, they take it in pace and don’t reside on it. They grew up in different places which make their form differently; however, in the end, It does not matter to them as they both find ways to match the different sexes and still have productivity in their lives.. Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Florida, a quiet black town with only white passer-by from time-to-time, while Staples grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, surrounded by gang activity from the beginning. Both Hurston and Staples share similar and contrasting views about the effect of the color of their
“On the Subway,” by Sharon Olds as she contrasts the two worlds of a wealthy Caucasian and a indigent African-American. The Caucasian narrator, a female, describes how this black man appears to her as she fears for her life as if he is ready to prey on her. She brings two worlds from different backgrounds together through the use of imagery and fearful and hopeful tones.
While underground in Philadelphia’s subway, Ross repeatedly uses word correspondence to establish a narrative rhythm for the reader. Fran Ross critiques different commuters as they struggle to avoid the “irritation, humiliation, irrigation, and syncopation,” caused by the station’s leaky pipes. The vernacular is strongly based on tempo, rhyming and movement through the composition’s emphasis on movement. Furthermore, she stresses the consecutive repetition in the following sentence, stating, “According to the number of drops that fell on the traveler from the Leaky Pipes, he or she was irritated, humiliated or irrigated.” Not only does this establish a friendly narrative voice, it stresses what is at stake for the passengers on the subway. If they take a wrong step, the
Fear is an amazing emotion, in that it has both psychological as well as physiological effects on the human body. In instances of extreme fear, the mind is able to function in a way that is detached and connected to the event simultaneously. In “Feared Drowned,” Sharon Olds presents, in six brief stanzas, this type of instance. Her sparse use of language, rich with metaphors, similes and dark imagery, belies the horror experienced by the speaker. She closes the poem with a philosophical statement about life and the after-effects that these moments of horror can have on our lives and relationships.
Stein and Pablo Picasso, her friend and contemporary, both used masking as an aesthetic means by which to alter the nature of an initial subject. Inspired by African masks, Picasso painted a mask on a portrait of Stein, while Stein rewrote her own story, first captured in Q.E.D., into the black characters of the central tale in Three Lives. In doing so, North argues, Stein both invited her white readers to live in to her characters, and allowed herself to see both race and gender as a “role,” not as a biologically predetermined attribute. At the same time, the literary and linguistic mask establishes itself as representative of freedom from European “convention” and as an example of nature and freedom, but also as a construction, a cultural convention and restriction fin and of itself. The usage of the mask, for North, represents the breaking down of the dichotomy between “impersonality and individuality, [and] conventional representation and likeness.”
The poem, “On the Subway” written by Sharon Olds, expresses the contrast between the rich Caucasian population and the African-American, which is broken up into three sections. The first expressing contrast of the white and black persons through imagery. The second explaining the relationship between them in a shift of tone. And the third describing the white population of America as a whole with another shift in tone.
In his poem “In the Subway (2),” Aaron Leyeles introduces the image of a hand dropping golden money as a distinctive feature in both the third and last stanzas. This distinctive feature is a complex metaphor functioning to illustrate the struggle of the passengers in the subway cell against the influences of capitalist America.
On the Subway, a poem by Shawn Olds, is about two different people on a subway, a black male and a white female. That right there are the two portraits, the two different worlds of a black male and a white woman. These portraits, in the poem, are contrasted and developed by tone and imagery.
On the poem “on the subway” by Sharon Olds. The narrator of this poem is describing how two worlds come together in one single setting. In this poem two different people come into each other where there will be a contrast between both portrait and where I will discuss the insight of the result of the experience by referring to the literary techiniques used such as tone, poetic devices and imagery.
This poem is talked about a 15 years black girl, named Claudette Colvin, refuse to offer her sit to white people, and she was arrested in 1955 because she desegregated buses. And this event become a safety fuse of civil right movement. And after
The subway system has not changed much from the 50’s to the present. Based on the attire of the people, I can imagine that this is during a cold season, perhaps the winter and most of these people hold professional occupations. Something that I could not help but notice was the choice in color of the painting. George Tooker used many shades of red, some blue, and beige, but mostly red in their attire. Due to the body language, I can tell that this wasn't a particularly good era to be in the subway. Perhaps it was unsafe. The facial expressions by the people in the subway depicts some kind of fear, like no one trusts one another. Mr. Tooker was in fact known for depicting anxiety and fear into his work. William Grimes from The New York Times states just that in his article “George Tooker, Painter Capturing Modern Anxieties, Dies at 90” when he wrote, “George Tooker, a painter whose haunting images of trapped clerical workers and forbidding government offices expressed a peculiarly 20th-century brand of anxiety and alienation”. The men in this image seem menacing, and quite angry, it seems as if the woman at the forefront is scared of the men in subway. The first man in what appears to be phone booth stalls over on the left, appears somewhat frightened and alert of his surroundings and is visibly defensive. The way this artist portrayed the subway, resembles that of a prison. Along with the
The three poets convey the feelings of seriousness, happiness, and failure. In the poem “Simile”, Scott Momaday explains how people and the actions we do are similar to animals in which the comparison was towards deer. In “Moon Rondeau” by Carl Sandburg he illustrates that working together in a relationship, you may be able to accomplish a task and generate a strong bond. In the final poem “Woman” by Nikki Giovanni she displays how one may want to grow and be someone special to your significant other but they may not care of what their other may want. The three poets are illustrating the theme of humans being similar to animals in which case they either work together or they just ignore each other within the literary similarities and differences of the three poems.