WallagerJenipherBlogPost"Onthesubway"

My thoughts about the poem “On the Subway,” were as followed, the first thing that had come to my mind, was that it was about a lady that was being very judgmental of a man on the subway. I believe she is making wrong assumptions off of the other man’s looks, clothes, and color of his skin. Thus, the narrator’s statement, “He has the casual cold look of a mugger” proves that she is being judgmental by just looking at him, without knowing the man personally or even caring. Also, the lady is stereotyping the man she has seen on the subway by thinking that just because she has a better life, that the man on the subways thinking is raw and dark of the upper-class or of her being white. In the poem it says, “if he is in my power, the way I am living off his life, eating the steak he does not eat, as if I am taking the food from his mouth,” this particular statement shows that her thoughts are not rational, and that she is stereotyping the man just by his looks. Additionally, I feel she is making excuses to why she is acting the way she did. An example of her making an excuse would be when in the poem, the narrator (the women) says, “I must profit from his darkness,” that statement alone I believe is just an excuse for her. Furthermore, I think this poem has meaning of a woman being worried about the man on the subway, due to being upper class and the other man being a lower class, maybe a homeless man, while making assumptions about him without even knowing him or his story. I believe this because of how the poem is wrote, the word usage, and it sounds like you can hear/feel the shakiness in her voice, while reading the poem as it comes to life.