Analysis of The Race by Sharon Olds - Essay Example

work] The Race by Sharon Olds: A Review Why I chose the poem The Race by Sharon Olds is a poem of beauty and mystery and is thought-provoking. The way it was constructed was simple in approach, devoid of metrics and constricting parameters, but it flowed with ease, capturing the mood and emotions the persona was going through. From the beginning to the end, we see clearly a woman racing to catch a last glimpse of a dying father, perchance they may be able yet to talk with each other. Her scheduled flight is delayed, and in search for alternatives, she is given the run-around. Twice, she flitted from one alternative to another, but in the end, she still seemed not to have found a travelling solution. The poem in the end suggests that indeed she was united with her father but in a different level this time. The end seems to suggest that in search for a solution, the persona has lost recklessly her life in order to bridge the gap between her father and her which she had wanted to attain through a mere plane flight. The lines are suggestive - I ran to Gate 17 and they were just lifting the thick white lozenge of the door to fit it into the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not too rich, I turned sideways and slipped through the needle's eye, and then I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet was full, and people's hair was shining, they were smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a mist of gold endorphin light, I wept as people weep when they enter heaven, in massive relief. We lifted up gently from one tip of the continent and did not stop until we set down lightly on the other edge, I walked into his room. The poem's message Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) French author and filmmaker, said - "Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically." "Torpor" is defined as by The American Heritage Dictionary as a state of mental or physical inactivity or insensibility. Things happen in life and we take to them automatically without much thinking. We take to things like eating and sleeping like they happened everyday in the same old way. It is only when things jar us into an end that we take notice of these everyday happenings in life. We tend to think we are going to live everyday that we will never miss anything or anyone in the structure of our lives at anytime, that things will happen exactly according to schedules like the sun rising without fail in the morning, and setting without fail in the evening. The beginning of the poem presented the persona's dilemma that disrupted her life and she came face to face with reality. It is obvious that she thought the plane would be there as scheduled. When she looked for another alternative, more or less, she had expected the alternative to be readily there. When there was none, at least she thought the second alternative was also there as a ready replacement. The self-admission is contained in here - I ran, I who have no sense of direction raced exactly where he'd told me, like a fish slipping upstream deftly against the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with my heavy bags and ran, the bags wagged me from side to side as if to prove I was under the claims of material. Man tends to think that matters automatically arrange themselves for human beings. When it does not, then man begins to notice and question why. Instead of facing up to reality, man tends to solve things and abandon life entirely in pursuit of what is immediately before him. The persona, for example, did not care anymore about herself in pursuit of a flight bringing herself to her father as in - I raced up the moving stairs two at a time, at the top I saw the long hollow corridor and then I took a deep breath, I said goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort, I used my legs and heart as if I would gladly use them up for this, to touch him again in this life. I ran and the big heavy dark bags banged me, wheeled and swam around me like planets in wild orbits. The message is that one should not be too presumptuous of life and be ready anytime as we do not own our lives. Life is not a bed of roses. We have to be responsible as living creatures. Life, in fact, has an inevitable end and it can come anytime. We are not supposed to think that it will work smoothly for us in everyway. What the poem unveiled to me, or showed me about the world The poem has showed me that not everyone has the time to pay attention to everybody's needs - as exemplified in the persona's being told to go here and there in search for solutions to her problems. We all have responsibilities to take care of and we are not to expect that people function according to their roles strictly to the letter and for our own personal needs. The world is full of people who have to be attended to, and we are not to see ourselves as the lone focus. The poem has also showed to me that in pursuit of solutions, we are to be careful as we may be trying to solve one problem, but in the end, we create more problems. Patience in all things and self-control are needed as we do answer to our calling everyday. When we do not have the solutions right away, we must not put the blame on others; hence we have to be always ready. Work Cited Poetry Friday: Sharon Olds. Scrivenings. May 1, 2007. 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