Analysis of “1954” by Sharon Olds Essay

1954 by Sharon Olds is a poem displaying the horrors of an instance of rape and murder of a young girl by a man named Burton Abbott in 1954. Olds social occasions a frantic and horrified tone highlighted by a c arful preference of phrase to transport her messages that any ordinary-looking person can disguise brutal and the current evaluator system has a hypocritical eye-for-an-eye mindset that single ends up destroying human life.The structure of 1954 is built on enjambment and scummy sentences. This helps the reader understand business the utterer feels, as if vocalizes argon simply pouring out, developing the frantic and horrified tone of the poem. This precaution builds as the loud verbalizer system begins to engender connections between the victim and herself. The author uses distinct imagery in phrases comparable I feared the word eczema, like my acne and like the X in the paper which marked her body to help make these connections. The speaker relates the victims eczema with her own acne, and recognizes how an innocent, little girl has been rock-bottom to nothing just now an X that marked where her lifeless body was left. now that the speaker can relate to the victim in a well-defined way, she begins to realize how ordinary the murderer was.The author uses simple, ordinary diction to expound him. Phrases like as if he were not someone specific, his face was delaying and ordinary, and he looked almost humble are examples of the authors use of ordinary diction that make the killer muster up acrossm normal. The speaker then(prenominal) says the killer went against what Id thought I could count on about evil. This helps support the message that evil can be wrapped in anyone because by making the murderer seem ordinary, the author forces the speaker and the reader to begin to question the people around them.A defined shift occurs in line 22 of the poem. The author shifts from using the word fear to the word pity when referring to the crime, and begins to use fear to describe how the speaker feels towards consequences the murderer, Burton Abbott must face. The speaker realizes that the good people, the parents were going to fry Mr. Abbott on the electric car chair for his crime. The author deliberately used the word fry to express that the parents of the victim did not just believe that Abbott should receive capital punishment, but they wanted him to suffer they wanted to watch himwrithe in annoying for what he did to their daughter. As a result, the speaker begins to fear electricity, and her mothers electric blanket. The author uses this and other carefully chosen phrases like wipeout to the person, death to the home planet to demonstrate the hypocrisy that exists in the judge systems eye-for-an-eye mentality when it comes to capital punishment. When someone commits a murder, they are sentenced to death, simply resulting in further loss of human life. People who see these crimes in the news not only fear th e murderer they fear the brutal punishment just as much, demonstrated by the speakers new fear of electricity.The author uses carefully chosen diction and tone to communicate two completely different messages to the reader. Both of these messages come together at the end of the poem to pose a single, tarriance question to the reader Who should we fear more? The murderer, or our own justice system?