Rite of Passage

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1984

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context: Confessionalism

Sharon Olds’s work is often described as exemplifying Confessionalism, a movement of the mid-20th century that largely relied on subjective experience and autobiography to explore personal themes such as identity, mental health, and spirituality, and sometimes greater themes like genocide, social injustice, and war. For Olds, this adherence to Confessionalism can be seen most dominantly in her earliest work, including her Satan Says collection, which often draws on her own childhood and daily life to form greater connections to identity and being. Olds’s second collection, The Living and the Dead, which includes “Rite of Passage,” uses similar personal experiences and autobiography, including the experience of watching children at her son’s birthday party as a young mother, as a way to draw larger comparisons to society, particularly the struggle for dominance that often occupies predominantly male spaces, even at a young age. While Olds has often avoided describing her work as Confessionalism, she employs similar use of personal autobiography to make broader statements on identity and modern life.

Confessional-style poetry often uses free verse as its medium, moving away from the formal constraints of poetry that dominated before it and toward everyday language unencumbered by the concerns of rhyme and meter. Olds’s lines are often short, creating the effect of quick movement down the page, facilitated by her use of enjambment for most lines.

Sociohistorical Context: Violence, the Vietnam War, and Popular Culture

Olds’s son was born in 1972, at the height of the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement it inspired. The Vietnam War is often referred to as the first “television war,” as the relatively recent proliferation of televisions and news media created competition for viewership among networks that resulted in largely uncensored on-site coverage of the war. These images were broadcast to millions of people around the world. Outrage was sparked by the military atrocities that, hidden in previous wars, were now easily viewable.

Despite the public’s lack of support for the Vietnam War, which officially ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975, many wartime television shows and movies became incredibly popular in the time during and after the war, including Hogan’s Heroes (1965-71), M*A*S*H (1972-83), The Waltons (1972-1981), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Apocalypse Now (1979), among many others. War was unavoidable in much of popular culture, exposing many young boys growing up in the 1970s and 1980s to the hypermasculine ideals of achieving heroic feats and demonstrating bravery, physical strength, and aggression, which also inevitably included acts of violence.

While Olds doesn’t directly comment on the Vietnam War in “Rite of Passage,” war serves as an important motif throughout the poem, and it’s possible that the poem was inspired by a mother’s concern for a son being born into a time of violence. Her collection The Living and The Dead (1984) is split into two parts: “Poems for the Dead,” which includes poems about Olds’s parents and historical figures like Marilyn Monroe, and another, “Poems for the Living,” in which “Rites of Passage” is included. The poem’s discussion of war and violence forms a connection to other poems in the collection, particularly those that deal with social violence like the Tulsa Race Riot and WWI. Olds’s later work would continue to expand to include additional social commentary, but her poems remain rooted in her autobiographical experience as a mother and wife.