Even though I have never been in a situation where I have had to flee a country, I have been the new girl in quite a few situations. Even as someone who has never been and never will be a minority, I still can relate to her poems which I think is really cool. In her housekeeping poems, she relates to girls who are itching to get out from their parents oppressing molds. She writes about fitting in, stepping out of her comfort zone, and daily struggles of a teen. The imagery shows the speaker leaving a marks in the dust, which is a metaphor for her wanting to make a mark in her life.Julia Alvarez lived out a unique story but is still able to relate to minorities in the 1960s and today. In other words, she doesn’t want to do only housework for the rest of her life and remain unknown to the rest of the world. She hopes to one day be known for a powerful impact she had on the world, rather than be like her mother, whom she describes as being “anonymous”. The reader can easily see that the young girl longs to leave a mark on the world as she describes how she leaves her “signatures” in the dust on the furniture “like scales”. Instead, she longs to make an impact on the world and be known rather than “anonymous” like her mom. The last 2 lines of the poem tell the reader about how the girl does not wish to become like her mother, and just stay at home cleaning all day everyday. The reader also gets a better sense of how watching her mother get rid of her “fingerprints”. This helps to make the picture of the little girl wanting to leave a lasting impact on the world more vivid to the reader. In the next 11 lines, she illustrates her mother getting rid of the marks she made in the dust by using more imagery and figurative speech. There is no consistent rhyme scheme, but the rhymes that are seen throughout emphasize the objects the speaker attempts to leave an imprint on, as well as the imagery that she uses to describe how she does it in the first 5 lines of the poem. Four lines per stanza from stanza 2-4 allow the reader to process her meaning behind talking about each element and what they do.Īlvarez uses imagery, similes, and metaphors to depict a young girl who attempts to leave a mark in the dust throughout her house every morning before her mother wipes it away. Each stanza also includes only 4 lines, whereas the first stanza includes 14. She also switches to an alternating rhyme scheme to put more emphasis on it. The speaker talks about the little things in nature, showing the reader how much she appreciates them and how little things like that give her something else to focus on, and take her mind off her busy lifestyle. The rest of the poem continues to accentuate the lack of free time in her everyday life. She has no free time to do anything she wants, not even to just sit and relax for five minutes. The use of the couplet rhyme scheme emphasizes all the different chores she has to do around the house. This also displays her overwhelming schedule for her every day life. This shows the giant load of work she has to get done before the day is out. The list of household errands the speaker does on a daily basis shows that she is always busy and has little to no free time. The organization of the stanzas help to emphasize certain aspects of the poem, such as the different tasks the speaker has to complete, and the different elements of nature that she can “call” her “own” and their actions. Imagery is used throughout the poem to help the reader to better visualize everything the woman must do, and all the simple things she wishes she could enjoy freely. Personification is used from stanza 2 to 4 to emphasize the speaker’s longing for a friend. Alvarez uses an AABB rhyme scheme to emphasize the different chores. This poem focuses on the duties a woman normally carries out, and longs for something to call her own.
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