What Is The Theme Of The Poem America By Tony Hoagland

“America” by Tony Hoagland represents the America the teacher once knew and the America that it has changed to and how with the times not only people changed but the way we look at America has changed. The Poem America represents someone who may have a hard time growing with the country. Hoagland uses figure of speech, imagery, and symbolism to prove this point.
“The students with blue hair and a tongue ring” (1) when we read this line it makes us visualize a young man in a class room with blue and tongue ring. Also this shows were the country is now and the style and how it may have changed sense the teacher was the age of his students. When America is compared to a maximum security prison and then said “made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes were you can’t tell the show from the commercial” (3/4) this is a metaphor because obviously America isn’t made of these things. The lines 6-10 he mentions how the group of teenagers are driving to the mall “letting rap music pour over

It being 2003 there may have been a little more security of the American people after 9/11 happened making it seem like a “maximum-security prison”, or made America seem suffocating. The author of the poem Tony Hoagland wrote the character of the teacher to be someone who may not like the generation of teenagers he is living in. He might not know how to teach his student how to appreciate the way America was when he was a student. Or to remain the way he was when he was the age of the student with all the pressure of the changing times moving in all around. Tony Hoagland uses many metaphors to get his point across. Also Imagery to describe to the reader what he is looking at and how that time period looked. And finally he used symbolism to further describe the time period and how the teacher was feeling about all the changes he was