Analysis of “1954” by Sharon Olds Essay

1954 by Sharon Olds is a poem displaying the horrors of an instance of rape and murder of a young girl by a homophile named Burton Abbott in 1954. Olds uses a frantic and horrified tone highlighted by a careful choice of phraseology to prove her messages that any ordinary-looking person can disguise evil and the current justice system has a hypocritical eye-for-an-eye mindset that only annihilates up destroying human life.The structure of 1954 is built on enjambment and disconnected sentences. This helps the reader understand business concern the verbalizer feels, as if words are simply pouring out, evolution the frantic and horrified tone of the poem. This fear builds as the speaker begins to figure out connections between the victim and herself. The antecedent uses clear imagery in phrases like I feared the word eczema, like my acne and like the X in the paper which marked her body to help make these connections. The speaker relates the victims eczema with her aver acne, and recognizes how an innocent, microscopical girl has been reduced to nothing but an X that marked where her lifeless body was left. Now that the speaker can relate to the victim in a clear way, she begins to realize how ordinary the murderer was.The beginning uses simple, ordinary expression to describe him. Phrases like as if he were not someone specific, his face was heavy and ordinary, and he looked almost humble are examples of the authors use of ordinary diction that make the killer seem normal. The speaker then says the killer went against what Id thought I could regard on about evil. This helps support the message that evil can be disguised in anyone because by making the murderer seem ordinary, the author forces the speaker and the reader to begin to question the people well-nigh them.A definite shift occurs in line 22 of the poem. The author shifts from using the word fear to the word pity when referring to the crime, and begins to use fear to describe how the spea ker feels towards consequences the murderer, Burton Abbott must face. The speaker realizes that the good people, the parents were handout to fry Mr. Abbott on the electric chair for his crime. The author deliberately used the word fry to express that the parents of the victim did not just believe that Abbott should receive capital punishment, but they cute him to suffer they wanted to watch himwrithe in pain for what he did to their daughter. As a result, the speaker begins to fear electricity, and her lets electric blanket. The author uses this and other carefully chosen phrases like death to the person, death to the stand planet to demonstrate the hypocrisy that exists in the justice systems eye-for-an-eye mentality when it comes to capital punishment. When someone commits a murder, they are sentenced to death, simply resulting in further loss of human life. People who see these crimes in the news not only fear the murderer they fear the brutal punishment just as much, demonst rated by the speakers new fear of electricity.The author uses carefully chosen diction and tone to communicate two completely different messages to the reader. Both of these messages come together at the end of the poem to pose a single, lingering question to the reader Who should we fear more? The murderer, or our own justice system?