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“Still Life in Landscape” by Sharon Olds

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“Still Life in Landscape” by Sharon Olds
Drunk driving is a known problem throughout the world, there are many accidents and deaths that occur each day because of stupidity and ignorance. In many cases families are torn apart and left heartbroken for the rest of their lives because of drunk driving. Drunk driving is the number one major cause of accidents and deaths on the road. Carelessness is responsible for drunk driving, and can be easily avoided, it can deal a great amount of pain and suffering and change the lives of many. The poem sets up a true meaning of what reality really is and can be seen and interpreted through the different perspectives by the child, reader and audience. The child in the poem in “Still Life in Landscape” by Sharon Olds interprets the poem as being reality and see’s for herself the dangers that exist. The child’s description of what she sees send a strong image to the reader that reality does exist and these things happen everyday. The gruesome imagery in this poem is used to make a strong statement about reality. All these examples can be explored even further. The author in “Still in Landscape” uses some very descriptive gruesome imagery to describe the scene of the car crash. The imagery that is used in this poem is intended to make a very strong impact on how reality is really displayed and what really goes on in the world. The author narrates the poem through the eyes of the child and describes what the child sees and feels. “A woman was lying on the highway, on her back, with her head curled back and tucked under her shoulders so the back of her head touched her spine between her shoulder-blades, her clothes mostly accidented off, and her leg gone, a long bone sticking out of the stub of her thigh, my mother grabbed my head and turned it and clamped it into her chest, between her breasts”(Lines 3-13). The child is seeing reality at first hand and her mother can only grab her head and turn it clamped into her chest. The mother is not really protecting her child by


Cited: Sharon Olds, The Upswept Room (2003) NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 23.
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