In the poem “Identity” by Julio Polanco, the theme to be independent and live up to your own expectations, not others’ is developed by the use of the flowers as an extended metaphor. In Identity, the speaker expresses the flowers as “always watered, fed, guarded, admired, but harnessed to a pot of dirt” throughout the poem, letting his ideas of the flowers be interpreted deeper than what they actually are (Polanco, Lines 2-3). The flowers are a constant metaphor for the people who live up to the ideas of modern society, that seems to always find the need to feel loved or to be a certain way. They are shown to be what we see as “average expectations” in a certain person, which can be what you have, or what you look like. This hinders them from
