Author's Note: I know, I haven't posted in a while, but I am back.:) This essay is a poem analysis for the poem "Where the Sidewalk Ends". Below I have posted a copy of the poem for you all to read! Keep in mind that this is just my interpretation, so nothing is set-in-stone to be the real reason it was written. I hope you all enjoy my 2012 DWA piece.
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
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Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein may be an old poem written many years ago, whose author happens to be dead, but it is personally my favorite poem ever written. When I was littler, I thought the poem was about a real sidewalk. But recently, I have figured that it’s not. It is about so much more; that sidewalk that he talks about, that’s life, but more importantly the end of your life.
If I told you that last night I went outside and the trees were dancing, what would you think? Would you really believe that the trees were tangoing or possibly waltzing? Of course not, trees can’t dance, but we can picture them dancing. These are figurative language devices that help us get an image. So when Shel Silverstein sat down to write this poem, he wasn’t writing about a walk down a sidewalk.
“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.”
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.”
The sidewalk is your time, your journey, your life. And at some point it’s going to come to a stop. When he talks about the sidewalk ending, right before the street begins – we get the first look into using devices. The street is your after life, either Heaven or Hell or wherever you go after you die and the sidewalk is the moment you die. When Silverstein mentions the bird resting from its flight, I get a feeling that the bird is a person, one who’s “resting” from their long stressful life on earth. Throughout the whole poem we see how he works figurative language into the piece.
When reading a poem, you don’t only want to look for the meaning used behind the words; you want to read it in the voice that the author is trying to show-- often known as the tone of the piece. If I were to listen to a recording of somebody reading this poem, I would safely bet that they would not be yelling. They probably wouldn’t be laughing, joking around, or reading through with no expression, but instead using a calm voice, a very Morgan Freeman narrating the March of the Penguins style. No matter what poem you’re reading, the only way you will completely comprehend the poem is if you understand the tone that the author is trying to use.
Aside from looking at the figurative language and the tone when analyzing a poem, it is important to find the mood of the piece. In kindergarten you learned that your mood was what you were feeling. You could be happy or sad, sometimes even mad, right? Well when you’re finding the mood of a poem, it’s the exact same thing. The feeling that you get when reading a poem is the mood. When I read “Where the Sidewalk Ends” I feel like there are no worries in the world. It makes dying seem like such a normal thing, not scary at all. As for me, the mood in this piece --even though the topic is such a horrifying thing – is happy.
At a glance, this poem might be about a real sidewalk, maybe even one in the Village of Pewaukee, like what I thought when I was littler. However now I realize that it holds so much more underneath the words. I realize that the author wants us to feel certain ways when reading his work; I realize that he purposely uses figurative language devices to paint a picture; I realize that this poem isn’t really about a place where the sidewalk ends.
