an easy passage

what happens?

• speaker recounts a girl’s journey as she climbs up her house

• trying not to think abt dangers or her friend

• no idea abt the way the world stops accepting people the bigger they get, or the struggles awaiting her

• describes nearby, dreary factory

Themes

• identity

• childhood

• society and culture

identity

• focuses on ideas of self-development and growing up

• emphasis on claiming an identity within the world

childhood

• brought into the poem through ideas of transition away from childhood, while still retaining some imagery in the poem

• innocence, yet recklessness of youth

society + culture

• cultural ideas of growing up + rites of passage

• broader criticisms of the concept of adulthood such as the ‘drab’ working worlds

enjambment

• creates a narrative yet reflective tone

• continued going over edge to next line → half suspended

• motif of ‘half’ → transitioning from young to adult

discomfort of the climb

metaphor for discomfort of transition from childhood to adulthood

poem operates in constant dichotomy

• allegory for transitioning between childhood and adulthood

• constant listing shows continuous flow of following the girl

• single stanza leads for no separation between discussing child + woman