Analysis of the On the Subway by Sharon Old Essay Example

description of his feet as huge suggests that he is person who still has some growing up to do and is in a physically awkward phase in his life since his body is not yet proportioned. This is also obvious in the choice of foot wear. The boy is wearing sneakers with laces in a “complex pattern.” The character is further described as follows:

… He has the
casual cold look of a mugger
alert under hooded lids. He is wearing
red, like the inside of the body
exposed. (Lines 7-11)

Through these lines, we can see that the boy has youthful arrogance and looks menacing and intimidating to the other character of the poem. This description is based on how the other character interpreted a “look” of someone who is a total opposite of him or herself. The contrast between the characters is seen in the lines:

… I am wearing dark fur, the
whole skin of an animal taken and
used.

The fur suggests that the other character is female and is older than the boy. It also provides a hint of their social standing. The “fur” suggests wealth on the part of the observer, as it is a very expensive luxury item. On the other hand, this line gives us the idea that the boy described above looks poor. The difference is what drew the observer’s eye to the boy. The boy is everything she is not, male, young and poor. Although, the racial difference was not mentioned until the later part of the poem, there is a hint that this difference also exists between the characters. This is because of how the observer describes the boy as having the “casual cold

look of a mugger alert under hooded lids.” The reader is almost forewarned that the poem will have a racial theme.

This anticipation is rewarded in the later part of the poem when the observer said “And he is black and I am white…” Now, the reader finally has an idea where the observer’s fear or sense of being menaced is coming from. The rich white woman in the subway sees a black teenage boy looking at her in less than subservient manner and she assumes that he is a mugger out to get her fur coat and briefcase.

In the next part of the poem, the observer seems to want to present or justify her thoughts, even to herself and in her own private musings, by showing knowledge and awareness of how past racial discrimination has affected her present “privileged” life, as shown in the poem as follows:

… and without meaning or
trying to I must profit from his darkness,
the way he absorbs the murderous beams of the
nation's heart, as black cotton
absorbs the heat of the sun and holds it. There is
no way to know how easy this
white skin makes my life…”

However, this awareness of history did not sufficiently enlighten the observer to stop her from assuming that any young black male who looked at her strangely is delinquent and criminal. This is discrimination, one which the woman is not aware that she has committed.

The poem used the “the stream of thoughts” of the observer to drive home a point in subtle manner and it does so very effectively. The poem shows the reader the kind of hypocrisy present in contemporary times. Today, more people are aware

of the issues involving racial and other forms of discrimination and may even think themselves enlightened. However, the poem shows the reader that people are not as enlightened as they think they are. People still discriminate others because of age, gender and race, only, now, they do subconsciously. Olds’ wanted to draw attention to this kind of discrimination since it, too, is detrimental to our society.