Bored
The poem “Bored” recounts old memories of the speaker, as she explores a period of her life where she felt trapped in a place and like she had no independence over herself. The speaker exhibits boredom and a lack of power over herself and her daily life, as she goes through old memories of working on a farm with a man. She relates her feelings of boredom, and the constant repetition of her daily life and all the tedious, unsubstantial tasks and details she did to pass the time. Her lack of independence in her life is shown by how she sits idly by while the man she’s with drives and steers them. He seems to hold most of the power and control in their relationship, and she feels a lack of direction in her life. Using words like “myopia” and “minutiae”,
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She spent so much time focused on inconsequential details of things and sitting passively while someone else drove and steered her life, which is reflected in line 11, “he drove, steered”. During this period of her life, she felt discontent and not independent of herself, unable to have freedom nor do something more enjoyable. She works for someone else as he controls what they do, and she repeats the same tasks “over and over”. The use of constant repetition within the poem represents the monotonous feeling of her life. She was so immersed in the trifles of everything around her to entertain herself while she experienced an existential boredom, that she was unable to see anything apart from what was directly in front of her, leading to a lack of direction in her life or a view of what her future could be. The use of the words “myopia” and “minutiae” reflect this situation. Myopia, meaning near-sighted, is used metaphorically to imply her lack of direction in life and how she’s only seeing things that are up close, as opposed to a far future for herself. Minutiae reinforces this, by describing her experience as focusing on all the minor, precise details of things around her, expressing how unimportant the tasks she did seemed, and indicating she feels her life is also
She spent so much time focused on inconsequential details of things and sitting passively while someone else drove and steered her life, which is reflected in line 11, “he drove, steered”. During this period of her life, she felt discontent and not independent of herself, unable to have freedom nor do something more enjoyable. She works for someone else as he controls what they do, and she repeats the same tasks “over and over”. The use of constant repetition within the poem represents the monotonous feeling of her life. She was so immersed in the trifles of everything around her to entertain herself while she experienced an existential boredom, that she was unable to see anything apart from what was directly in front of her, leading to a lack of direction in her life or a view of what her future could be. The use of the words “myopia” and “minutiae” reflect this situation. Myopia, meaning near-sighted, is used metaphorically to imply her lack of direction in life and how she’s only seeing things that are up close, as opposed to a far future for herself. Minutiae reinforces this, by describing her experience as focusing on all the minor, precise details of things around her, expressing how unimportant the tasks she did seemed, and indicating she feels her life is also