The Use of Metaphor, Diction, and Symbol in Sharon Olds' The One Girl at the Boys Party

In a poem of reminiscent adolescence, Sharon Olds defines a young girl who has the capacity to judge adolescent emotion with the benefit of time, for she is now a mother herself. This definitive view of adolescent values and thought is mingled with the mystery of symbolic mathematics, which represents a maturity of this thought and a colorful insight into the development of a young girl as she becomes a woman. This poem also accentuates …

…social change as develops during the years of innocence and discovery. This flight from the conventional representation of a call to maturity is unique to Olds' style, whose feministic predilections shape her poetry into a brochure for the masses of women everywhere. Her mindful detail in respect to diction and metaphor create a poem that fosters the imagination, and a vicarious acceptance of those scenarios in which our whole world seems to fall to change.