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The Centaur By May Swenson Essay

686 Words3 Pages

Everyone has an imagination whether in depth or simple. Imagination is just a reflection of one's free spirit inside that cannot be shown on a regular basis. “The Centaur” by May Swenson shows a girl’s expression of her free spirit contrasting with the constraints of normal, everyday life.
In the beginning of the poem, the speaker uses varied imagery to show the extent of the girls free spirit and imagination. She goes to a willow grove “on [her] two bare feet” which she refers to as “[her] stable.” This opening to the poem both expresses how in depth the girls creativeness goes as she creates an imaginary stable out of a normal grouping of willow trees but also shows that she cares little for the typical gender roles of girls. Girls at that …show more content…

When the girl returns home, Swenson contradicts the exciting imagery from the ride by saying the girl enters a “dusky hall” with “clean linoleum” and leaves “ghostly toes” in the hall. These mundane adjectives identify that the girl is brought back from her imagination to boringness of reality. Before she enters the kitchen with her mother, the girl “smooth[s] [her] skirt”, showing that she is reapplying herself to the gender roles she previously left behind. Her mother then orders her to “go tie [her] hair back”, adding to the idea that when the girl is home, she is once again constrained to normalcy, unable to utilize her superior imagination. The contrasting ideas in the end of the poem create a divided between the girl’s wild imagination when she is alone, and the social norms she abides to when at home.
Although everyone has their own version of imagination and reckless spirit, only in some instances are people able to access it. “The Centaur” by May Swenson shows a girl going from wild and free in her own creativeness, to later being restricted to societal normalcy after returning

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