“Rites of Passage” by Sharon Olds

Throughout the course of this poem, the narrator is describing the scene at her son’s party. From this mother’s perspective, she is specifically focusing on two boys that were attending. First she points out that they were short “men”, and that they had smooth jaws and chins. They have small conversations, consisting of simple questions about age, resulting in smart answers. After this had started to starts some controversy between the two because they start eyeing each other. Being the young children that they are, they cleared their throats, folded their arms, and frowned. Moving away a little from the topic of these two boys, she begins pointing out things that she notices about her son. She says that he sparkles like a nutmeg on his cheeks. His chest is narrow like a balsa keel, and his long hands are cool and thin, like the day she gave birth to him. Finally, she explains that hey finally end up playing war as if they were generals.

This poem first gives me the perception of a mother just explaining details about her son’s parties, and other things that she finds interesting at the time. As I continued to read, I saw that she was pointing out many details about each thing. As I thought more into it, I started to realize that this is written from a mother’s point of view. In this case, this must have been something special for the mother and the son, and so the mother took notice into a lot of the minute details. The way that the author not only goes into detail, but uses dialect within the poem, enables me to actually envision what it going on. In a way, this poem is a little humorous because it personally reminds me when I was in first grade, and how I used to see people behave. Finally, I understood what was happening at the party and so on, but the part that I was confused about was the last two lines of the poem. I am not sure what the author exactly means by the men relaxing and playing war, because I am getting the perception that they are little kids, even though they are “men”, which is another thing that confuses me.