Stephanie Garcia Due: 2/24/14
808 ELA Poetry RR
In 1921, Russia had a terrible drought. Millions of
people died due to starvation. The poet Sharon Olds looks more deeply into this
subject by writing the poem “Photograph of The Girl.” She discusses the horrible
events due to this drought in this poem. Sharon Olds focuses on negative things
using allusion, imagery, and similes to give this poem a hopeful ending.
Olds uses allusion throughout this whole poem. This whole
poem is based off of an actual photograph of a girl from the time of the
drought, hence the title. You could really tell that this is based off of an
actual photograph because in one line of the poem, it says; “The caption says /
she is going to starve to death that winter / with millions of others (Olds 12-14).”
When Olds says “the caption” she is talking about the actual caption from the
photograph. By talking about the negative, it gives a lot of suspense for the
hopeful ending.
There is a lot of imagery used in this poem as well,
which helps the reader to imagine the picture in your own head. Some examples
of this is “The girl sits on the hard ground (Olds 1),” “…stunned / eyes
closed, mouth open, / raw hot wind blowing / sand in her face (Olds 3-6),” “She
leans on a sack (Olds 7).” All of these lines are setting up an image of the
girls surroundings. Some other examples in this poem are; “Hunger and puberty
are / taking her together (Olds 6-7),” “… layers of clothes fluttering in the
heat / the new radius of her arm curved (Olds 8-9),” “Each day she grows
thinner, and her bones / grow longer, porous (Olds 11-12).” These examples let
us set up an image of what the girl actually looks like. By using imagery, Olds
gives many negative images, giving a more suspenseful and hopeful ending to
this poem.
There is only one simile in this poem, but this poem
gives so much hope for the end of this poem. The simile is; “Deep in her body /
the ovaries let out her first eggs, / golden as drops of rain (Olds 14-16).”
This simile is giving so much hope at the end of the poem, being the last line,
by comparing her eggs to golden drops of rain. Because by saying this, Olds is
saying that even though there is so much death happening around her, this girl
has the ability to give life. And by comparing it to drops of rain during a drought
gives it that much more of a hopeful ending.
This poem goes from a terrible situation in the
beginning, to one of the most hopeful endings I’ve ever seen in a poem. This
poem being based off of an actual event from the past makes it that much
better. So, after reading this poem, I realized that even in horrible
situations, there is always hope in the end.
