Response 2 The Street
...nd it disappears. I feel he will be running forever if he doesn’t stop and confront his demons in his past. In the end he wants to confront his demons, but he is afraid of the consequences he will face. I came to the conclusion that he wanted to confront his problems toward the end, because the lines “Turning and turning among these corners which lead forever to the street where nobody waits for, nobody follows me, where I pursue a man who stumbles and rises and says when he sees me: nobody” reveals to me that he is running away from himself while chasing after himself at the same time. It also shows that he is disturbed by nightmares of his past and they will cause him to be tortured for life, or they will end when he finally confronts his past and makes peace within himself. The poem “The Street” can also be interpreted as a man who has been convicted of terrible crimes and is locked away in an insane asylum. He is put in solitary confinement and he is being used for experimental medications that cause hallucinations. These hallucinations cause him to face his crimes and learn to overcome them, but the medication is not the only one trying to convince him of something. His demons are trying to convince him to keep running and not to stop, which causes the continuous loop of him trying to catch his past to confront it and running from it at the same time. The image that the poem “The Street” gives me is of a cool fall night in a small suburban neighborhood where there are no street lights and the only light comes from the moon. The wind is fiercely blowing with signs of winter approaching and the trees have dropped their last leaf. It is so silent that the whistle of the wind sounds like a ghost is flying above. The street never ends it just goes around in a circle, looping like a nightmarish maze. Readers can relate to the poem “The Street” because I believe everyone has done something they regret, even if it is minor. They continue to run from the past even though they know if they conquer it they won’t have to run anymore. When I was in 10th grade I never went to class and wasted my life getting high, so eventually I was expelled from school, here I was 16 years old and already a screw up. I eventually went to Job Corps. and earned a G.E.D, but waited five years after that to attend college. Now when I am in class I feel I am behind all the other students who have just come from high school and every time I complete a project in class I feel it looks bad. I compare myself to the man stuck running away from his past (always feeling behind in school) and the man chasing his past to confront it (telling myself to work hard and the past wont matter). The poem also consists of thirteen lines, and when looked at deeper can give the reader a dark feel. The number thirteen has always been given a rep...