Rites Of Passage By Sharon Olds Summary

Power
“Rites of Passage,” a poem by Sharon Olds, displays the awkwardness between a group of first grade boys who attend a birthday party for the son of the narrator. For the duration of the poem, each boy keeps a watchful eye on the other as he—particularly the older boy—attempts to intimidate the younger boy in an effort to prove that he holds authority over him due to their one year age difference. What is intended to be a joyous occasion, swiftly transforms into a tension filled evening. “Rites of Passage” is comparable to the board game Monopoly. For instance, the game of Monopoly can promote small disagreements between the players. Furthermore, each player’s intension is to become the leader of the board the same way that each boy wants to become leader of the group.

First and foremost, Olds’s poem resembles Monopoly in the sense that every now and then; players get into small altercations due to everyone’s desire to gain control of the board the just as the boys do at the birthday party.

“Hands in pockets, they stand around / jostling, jockeying for place, small fights / breaking out and calming.” (lines 5-7). Each boy is jockeying for place in order to find a spot that is maybe closer to the birthday cake or just because of the simple fact that he feels as though he is bigger and better than the others therefore he should be the one who is upfront which causes small fights to take place between them. Just like these young boys, each player in Monopoly wants to be the one who is ahead of the others. There is always that one player who travels around the board and purchases every piece of property that is high in value leaving the smaller pieces of property for the other players which initiates arguments and ill feelings between the

players.
More pertinently, “Rites of Passage” is the written version of Monopoly because the young boys in Olds’s poem are competing to have control over each other while players compete for control over the board. Every Player keeps a close eye on their competitor’s in the hopes that their intense stares will somehow manipulate the dice to trundle into just the right number causing the other player to land on the property of their rival resulting in one player having dominance over the other. The small boys in Olds’s poem present these same characteristics towards each other: “They eye each other, seeing themselves / tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their / throats a lot, a room of small bankers, / they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you / up, a seven says to a six,” (lines 9-13). As one boy glares at the other at each other, he begins to view his self as being bigger than the other which encourages him to challenge his rival. Due to him being one year older, a seven year old boy threatens the six year old because he feels that he is stronger one out of the two. During a game of Monopoly, the players who have a larger amount of money tantalize those who don’t by threatening to buy their property and kick them out of the game. Just as the narrator calls the boys “small bankers”, the players in Monopoly can be categorized as bankers by the way he or she looks down upon the others as if they are the Alpha male.
All in all, “Rites of Passage” is similar to the board game Monopoly because along with the first graders in Olds’s poem, Monopoly player’s main goal is to obtain as much power as one can handle.