Poem Analysis of The Girl by Sharon Olds

Analyze: The Girl The poem that I will analyze is from Sharon Olds, The Girl. This poem is quite graphic but it describes a life lesson that two girls had to endure. This poem describes a graphic preplanned rape event. The girls were 12 years old, it seems that they were at the wrong place and living a wild life, and getting involved with the erroneous people. They partied with their supposed best friend, this is what I am getting from the poem, they were being chased and after being caught they were raped. During trial they were asked to state what had happened to them. They exclaimed who their rapist were. After they went through that, the author goes along in explaining how one of the girls’ lives had changed. The fact that she no longer went to parties that smoked and did wild things. The girl was considered a good girl, a girl that thanked God, and a girl that had cheerleading in her life. This had to take place in the woods or around the country. It seems like there was people around but in that area it was empty of people, further along there was a train track, and there was a railway brakemen, which means that this must have been around the 1940’s. This was also in the night times, and since it was the older days there wasn’t many buildings and recreation. It must have been around the southeastern area. The author is really well at placing good imagery, the brakemen (38) is a great example because it gives us a bit of detail where and around what time period this must have taken place. Another example of the imagery described in this poem is the rape scene, which is described in line 10-25. I don’t want to go into much detail with the rape scene but it was so descriptive a person who imagine the details in their mind. The words that were used were used to describe the location and how the location looked. For example as the girls were caught they were in a “small clearing” and in the clearing there was “random bracken”, which is something that you