Analysis Of Pat Mora s Fences - 942 Words

Pat Mora’s â€Å"Fences† deals with the timely issues of class division and privilege. She begins her poem on a positive note, saying â€Å"Mouths full of laughter,† which creates a safe and harmless tone; in the next line, Mora uses the Spanish word ‘turistas’ (tourist in English) to indicate possibly the ethnicity of the speaker. It is not until the last few lines of the poem, however, when the reader can also detect the class and likely status of the speaker, when the speaker’s mother says, â€Å"It’s their beach,† after seeing the speaker’s younger sister running across the sand where the affluent tourists are, thus opening the door for a Marxist reading of the poem. And at only 19 lines, â€Å"Fences† is a relatively short poem, but Mora’s use of†¦show more content†¦The next six lines (or next sentence) deepens the class divide between the speaker and the ‘turistas.’ First, the spe aker sees the women rub oil onto themselves, that is â€Å"sweeter than honey,† and the children being playful, sipping on drinks with â€Å"long straws, coconut white, mango yellow.† The scented oil and colorful drinks (‘material possessions’ in Marxist terms) demonstrate the privilege that the tourists have in comparison to what the speaker and her family have (or, more likely, do not have), for the latter would likely have regular plastic straws to basic drinks. Also, it is worth noting that the speaker does not even have a clear view of the tourists enjoying their vacation--she has to â€Å"peek† through the cactus fence, which is essentially a border between the two classes. The final six lines of the poem explicitly show the class division between the speaker and the tourists. When the speaker states that, â€Å"Once my little sister / ran barefoot across the hot sand / for a taste† (13-16), she ends on a period, almost hoping that her sister would be able to run across to the other side where the rich tourists and playful children are, to feel what it is like, to be equal to them. If the poem had ended here, it would be difficult to make a full