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In the Waiting Room and Swinging on a Rainbow

 

            Growing up in the types of societies that we have, most of us tend to be oblivious to things that go around us, this problem has taken a huge rise, especially in this age of technology. With our faces glued to the screens of our phones and computers, we miss most of the little pleasures that life grants us on a daily basis, and because of this, we are able to take them for granted. We are ignorant, also, to the things that happen all over the world, and when that harsh reality is thrust upon us, we tend to react very negatively. This ignorance affects us in more than one way, because not only does it affect our personal lives, it can also begin to affect the later generations that we raise. Just think about it, we ourselves haven't learned to enjoy these subtle things in life, so how can we teach our children how to do it, how do we stop them from following in our own dense footsteps? Elizabeth Bishop and Nikki Giovanni, in their respective poems, try and shine a light on the steps we need to take in order to correct our ways and also try and show what the consequences are of not correcting our mistakes. .
             In Giovanni's poem "Swinging on a Rainbow" she tries to tell us to enjoy the subtle things in life because even though they don't seem significant at first, once they are gone, you'll wish you had paid more attention to them. In Bishop's poem "In the Waiting Room" she shows a young girl who goes through a sort of identity crisis because she isn't ready to experience the harsh realities of life that will be thrust upon her as she grows up, and is thoroughly afraid of the unknown. In both of these poems, we see a conflict of not being able to enjoy the world to the full extent, be it because ignorance or fear. We are able to experience a sense of "cause and effect" due to the nature of what each speaker is speaking on. A sense of ignorance and inability to enjoy the subtle things in life such as the what the speaker in Giovanni's poem refers to may be the cause of the fear of the unknown and confusion about what your place in life is that the speaker in Bishop's poem experiences.


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