Ted Kooser Analysis

The poet Ted Kooser illustrates the agonies which every 3 to 25-year-old must come toe to toe with. In this nine-lined poem he narrates the tormented journey of a young boy who 's faced with the overwhelming weight of liabilities that he must carry to his library. The uniqueness of this poem is derived from comparing a student to a turtle, which I will elaborate further on. The purpose of the poem is to use the melancholy of many students in order to reveal their hardships . Every apt pupil understands being immersed in stress and strain of academia in order to persevere into a brighter future. The intent of this paper is to closely read the poem line by line in order for us to interpret his work the way it was intended.
Kooser showcases his eloquence quickly within the first two lines by establishing the comparison between the turtle and a student; "The green shell of his

This poem uses the tension between stanzas to communicate the on-goingness and unsettled nature of being a student and of being a person at all. The final line of this stanza runs into the next stanza and also is important because During the next stanzas Kooser decides to make a twist of the initial character that he 's introduced and turned him into a combative boy that 's not afraid to fight back with his assertiveness. The reason for vindication is how Kooser writes "He has extended his neck to full length." (ll. 4-5). This line is displaying the boy 's courage and reluctance to give into gravitational pull of surrender and collapsing. Normally when one pictures a tormented boy, they imagine him starring at his toes while walking with a slouched posture. Although that 's how he might be feeling inside, he 's certainly not revealing this sort of weakness. When Kooser describes the students chin he is describing it with stoicism; the student is enduring the pain. What makes this stanza unique is the way Kooser changes his readers perception of this character from a fragmented boy into