Summer Solstice Poem

Improved Essays
The Comradtic Mechanism
“Summer Solstice, New York City” by Sharon Olds; is a short poem about the longest day of the year, a day when one person tries to end his own life and the police who work to save him.
Your life. Possessive. It is your life, no one else. People like to think and speak in these terms; to make things belong to them, or to make themselves feel like they do. When people think about how to handle a problem that is effecting them, they like to think is a small closed off space. Of course not literally; rather, people like to think in terms of just their lives and how the issue is affecting them. Most people do not end up thinking about the effect their choices could have on others. Which saddens me to think about. Though,
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This is showing how tense the situation is; as well as how taken a back the crowd is. The comradery people have with one another is shown off in small part with the crowds worry, as well as the cops actions. The imagery is the largest evidence showing out the message of the poem. “Then the huge machinery of the earth began to work for his life” (Line 6) “lit a cigarette in his (The Tallest cop) own mouth and gave it to him (The jumper), and then they all lit cigarettes... burned like the tiny campfires we lit at the night back at the beginning of the world.”(Lines 35-40) It was not just the cops who worked to save the jumpers life; it was like the world it self worked to save his life. We are shown again the bond people have with one another. They lit cigarettes to calm down, though the tall cop lit the jumpers with his own mouth; showing us a bond as the cop and jumper are not taken a back by swapping of germs. As well this shows us that the cops thinks of the jumper as an equal. The last couple lines are ripe with imagery of the human bond. Telling us that as the cops and the jumper lay smoking, the embers are familiar to ones humans sat around in prehistory. The detail of humanity as a hunter gatherer society locks in the poems meaning. This societies had to work together to feed and protect everyone else within it. Likening the cops and jumper to this point in time, and using the symbolism of the fire, a strong symbol of life and community, affirms that humanity works with, and is connected to one another. This world is filled with humans, who have short and complex lives to live. Who will take finite time of their lives to care about the well-being of one person, they have never

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