Reach Out and Touch Poetry Essay Nosh Marcus ENG3U
Reach Out and Touch is a poem by Maxine Tyres. The poem is about two young children on a bus with their mother meeting a black woman for the first time. The two children touch the back of the woman’s neck, and there mother slaps away their hands and tells them not to ask questions about the black woman. It discusses many issues about prejudice happening at the time. “Reach Out and Touches” them is of xenophobia, or the fear of the “other”. This poem discusses how people (especially kid’s) learn to be xenophobic, and how children can learn this behavior from adults through both good and bad intentions. Xenophobia as a theme for this poem is supported by …show more content…
One structural device used is hyperbole. This is used in line 1 when the narrator calls the children “baby girl” and “baby boy”. This is used to emphasize how young the children are and thus stress there innocence. Another structural device used to support “Reach Out and Touch’s” theme of xenophobia is euphemism. Euphemism is used in line’s four through five. In these lines the two children touch the back of the black woman’s neck. The narrator describes the children’s fingers as “dipping” into the black woman’s neck. Rather than saying the children touched or poked the back of the woman’s neck the narrator substituted the word “dipped”. This is effective because it shows the children are not trying to be rude, they are just curious. A third structural device used is oxymoron. Oxymoron is used in the thirteenth line of the poem. This is used when the children are described as being “wrapped in silence and fear” through “motherlove”. The two clashing ideas of fear and love show that the mother might have had good intentions. However the fear of disturbing or offending “the other” (the black woman in this case) led her to instill these xenophobic notions onto her children. These structural devices in the poem show that the main theme of xenophobia in “Reach Out and
Reach Out and Touch is a poem by Maxine Tyres. The poem is about two young children on a bus with their mother meeting a black woman for the first time. The two children touch the back of the woman’s neck, and there mother slaps away their hands and tells them not to ask questions about the black woman. It discusses many issues about prejudice happening at the time. “Reach Out and Touches” them is of xenophobia, or the fear of the “other”. This poem discusses how people (especially kid’s) learn to be xenophobic, and how children can learn this behavior from adults through both good and bad intentions. Xenophobia as a theme for this poem is supported by …show more content…
One structural device used is hyperbole. This is used in line 1 when the narrator calls the children “baby girl” and “baby boy”. This is used to emphasize how young the children are and thus stress there innocence. Another structural device used to support “Reach Out and Touch’s” theme of xenophobia is euphemism. Euphemism is used in line’s four through five. In these lines the two children touch the back of the black woman’s neck. The narrator describes the children’s fingers as “dipping” into the black woman’s neck. Rather than saying the children touched or poked the back of the woman’s neck the narrator substituted the word “dipped”. This is effective because it shows the children are not trying to be rude, they are just curious. A third structural device used is oxymoron. Oxymoron is used in the thirteenth line of the poem. This is used when the children are described as being “wrapped in silence and fear” through “motherlove”. The two clashing ideas of fear and love show that the mother might have had good intentions. However the fear of disturbing or offending “the other” (the black woman in this case) led her to instill these xenophobic notions onto her children. These structural devices in the poem show that the main theme of xenophobia in “Reach Out and