Summary Of We Are Going By Tom Wayman

As the poem went on, it seemed to shift from youthful optimism to the realities of being an adult and crushing their youthful optimism. From line ten to the end it takes about the speaker’s home life and it seems like they aren’t aware of the reality around them. Their father had gotten out of the hospital and they didn’t seem sympathetic towards him, the speaker seemed to focus on the fact that they got to move into a new house and didn’t have to live in an apartment anymore. “We’d moved / from the apartment over the store / into a house with a front door. / I wanted people to ring the bell / and I’d answer it like on TV.” (ll 16-20). The speakers father has just been brought home and all they can focus on is opening the door like the people
This could show the speaker that you may not always have everything you want in life as an adult, and after reading the poem it made me think about how my life in the future could turn out and it felt like it took away some of my youthful optimism, as I’m sure it did with the speaker. The part that seems to crush their youthful optimism and make the speaker face reality is the very end of the poem. “So the gruel / slid back out again, dribbling / down his badly shaved chin and he / not doing anything to stop it. My father. / I left him there. This was my first / entrance into the land of failure, a country / I would visit so often / it would begin to feel like home.” (ll 29-36). The speaker talks about just leaving her father there to be alone after he won’t eat the thin oatmeal, and this is the point where the harsh reality seems to hit the speaker because they can’t do the simple task of feeding their father. The speaker also makes a big metaphor at the very end of the poem which allows you to tell that their youthful optimism is completely gone. When they say “This was my first