Summary Of Rite Of Passage By Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds

“Rite of Passage”

The “Rite of Passage” of Sharon Olds, talks about kids who came to the author (who is omnipotent) son’s birthday party. All the kids are boys and who show a real impressive grown-ups attitude that remind the author of little powerful army general ready to go to war. The tone used in the poem is sad, and ironic towards the forthcoming of the kids. The used of the imagery comes to reinforce the sense of battle and the poetic form here comes to some degree disorganized, like the chaos of a war.

The narrator creates here a personage in “Rite of Passage” that analyses the individual behaviors of the six to seven year old anniversary guests and give the impression of being sorrowful towards the deficiency of naivety

She illustrates the kids, with their hands in pockets, with smooth jaws and chins, their freckles, their smallness, and she uses the figure of speech simile and connotation in her lyrical language, as it is described in this sentence: “My son, freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,… long hands cool and thin as the day they guided him out of me,…”(703), signifying that while the little man fantasizes to have that dangerous grown-up outside, he is delicate beneath all that appearance. Yet, she uses the simile, in the sentence where she says: “the dark cake, round and heavy as a turret, behind them on the table” (703), and this time to show the contrast of the birthday cake and a weapon of war, the turret perhaps on the top of a tank, like she described it being on top of the

The author’s sentence structure does not rhyme, diverges in length and in connotation, more often observing the children, some other times her own feelings. Some of the sentences are evocative or descriptive, while some others are spoken comments going back and forth between the kids. She, as well touches back upon her own past; when she was bringing back some memories of the birth of her child: “… long hands cool and thin as the day they guided him out of me” (703). While the sentences run and read easily, as a cheerful child’s birthday party, they have no verse, or alliteration, which for a poem can seem paradoxical, as the adult original sound of the theme. One sure can get the feeling from which Sharon Olds is unhappy about the forfeiture of naivety of her son and she has the feeling that the upcoming of him is already placed in a disappointed manner, like they are going to grow up with conflict in their thoughts. On the other hands, when she says: “…they relax, and get down to playing war, celebrating my son’s life,” (703) she appears to still give optimism and a way out. In spite of everything, they are just kids and are barely imitating what they observe in their everyday lives and as far as they can distinguish, it is just