Rite of Passage

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1984

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Like most of Sharon Olds’s early work, “Rite of Passage” employs free verse, meaning that it lacks a formal rhyme scheme or regular meter, using shorter-length lines that create a sensation of fast movement down the page. The poem is short and written in everyday language and tone. This makes the poem feel as if the speaker is telling a story in ordinary, conversational language. Olds’s work, much like the Confessional poets that came before her, like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, as well as many poets of the mid- to late 20th century and today, often incorporates this conversational style of writing. Olds’s work is often praised for its everyday language and accessibility, as it appeals to a large number of readers who may have a less formal understanding of rhythm, meter, and other poetic constraints.

Enjambment

The majority of lines, with a few exceptions, are enjambed, meaning they continue from one line to the next without end punctuation. This lends to the poem’s conversational tone and also helps speed the poem along considerably. The line breaks occur most often where the speaker would pause in the recitation of the poem, many of the line breaks serving in lieu of a breath stop when the poem is read aloud. Other lines in the poem end in more traditional punctuation like commas and periods. These line endings imply the need to pause even longer than those lines that contain no punctuation. This contemporary style of poetry feels far less formal than the rhymed and metered verse that many poets writing in the 20th century, like Olds, moved away from. Contemporary poets like Olds often use enjambment to de-formalize the poetic voice and make poetry more akin to prose writing and everyday utterance. Enjambed lines make the shorter line units of poetry flow together for a more cohesive effect.

Irony

While the boys are described as men by the mother, with descriptions that compare them to adult men, bankers, and generals, their behavior is anything but. The childishness of infighting, bullying, and wrestling for dominance in young children appears common and almost humorous, while at the same time, through the social lens of violence and war, very serious. The speaker of the poem compares the children at the party to adult men, but at the same time, makes an indirect poignant statement on how the same behavior can, in adult men, be childish. The speaker of the poem does not outright say this is ironic but leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions about the disparity, as well as its greater implications when it comes to play and potential violence.

Narrative Voice

The poem is told from the point-of-view of a mother observing her son with his friends. The mother (the speaker) recreates a scene from daily life, making comparisons between her son and his friends’ behavior with that of adult men engaging in war. The speaker of the poem is an observer of the subjects of the poem, who perform most of the dramatic action. While the mother recounts the scene of the birthday party and offers detailed accounts of what is said and done by the boys, she does not, at any time, interfere to become part of the action. The behavior she sees on the part of the boys, however, does cause her to retreat inward into a personal memory of the birth of her son. The passiveness of the speaker allows the behavior of the boys to continue, as well as for the reader to draw conclusions as to how those behaviors resonate with greater questions of life, death, violence, and war.

Figurative Language

The poem’s figurative language is mostly centered around the ideas of battle and war, in which childlike skirmishes and age or size comparisons are couched as scenes of battle, with language and imagery that evoke a war scene: The cake is compared to a turret, the son’s small body is compared to a boat, and the children’s behavior is couched in references to war and bankers. This language, particularly the strangeness and sharpness of the word “kill” spoken by the son of the speaker, brings a very adult lens to the child’s party and a sense of seriousness at the end of the poem. The figurative language contributes to the war metaphor in the poem, as well as its themes surrounding violence and innocence lost. The idea of the birthday party as a celebration of life is also posed against the ideas of death and destruction wrought by war and war-like behavior, with much of the language surrounding motherhood, including the description of her son during birth, serving as a striking juxtaposition to death.

Consonance

Olds uses consonance, the repetition of the same consonant sounds, frequently in the course of the poem, which is another device that increases the speed of the poem and contributes to its verbal richness when read aloud. Instances of consonance include “jostling, Jockeying” (Line 6) and the son’s “freckles like specks” (Line 16). “Jockeying” (Line 6) harkens back to “pockets” (Line 5). There are many “K” sounds in the poem, including words like “clear, “bankers,” “keel,” “freckles, “specks,” and “kill,” all of which contribute to an uneasiness and sharpness that help reinforce the poems sinister implications in a larger context, despite its childhood scene. Conversely, Old’s employs more lilting “L” sounds in calmer moments of the poems, most noticeably in her description of her son’s body at birth, describing his chest as “narrow as the balsa keel of a / model boat” (Lines 17-18).