“On the Subway” by Sharon Olds is the same as its title to indicate a sense of dread,
improbability, and fear together with urban tensions. This poem itself niceties the feeling
experienced by Sharon as she sits on the subway, even if the subway itself is not termed in the
poem. The poem is based in America. However, the same problem is still there. It is about
Sharon categorizing a dark boy to be an assaulter “this is as a result of being in a causal cold look
of an assaulter. “Sharon is fearing the racism that is insisting her of the boy presence as an
assaulter. The boy is wearing “black sneakers laced with color white combined patter like a set
of premeditated scars “, and, “He is wearing red’. It makes Sharon think of the boy; the action
could take could do to her, scars that he can offer to her blood to be bare like the red being
portrayed on the boy’s body.
The fear that Sharon has is due to the boys look, by the way she is aware he could be the politest
boy in this world. Sharon is just precise forward-facing with her racism, “he is black, and I am
white, and since I have means I should profit from his darkness, the way he engages the
murderous beams of the country’s heart, as black cotton absorbs the heat of the sun holding it.”
She matches a black cotton to all the black individuals and the sun to the white. It seems that she
is somehow sympathetic to the black people. The poet feels sorry for the black and what they go
through as a result of the skin color.
On the “Telephone Conversation” the guy references color red, “Red Pillar-box. Red booth. Red
double tiered omnibus” as a sign of anger. This is similar to “on the Subway” where the boy
could be wearing red as a sign of anger. Both poems are talking of people hurriedly concluding,
instead of thinking for twice about themselves. The presence of racism belongs to individuals
who are not fair to others forgetting the results of their words. Both poems indicate what people
should think before making comments or being unfair to others just because of their color.
