[THE EXPERT]

بالتوفيق لك يا أخ سطام

وأعذرني انزل لهم شرح بسيط ل
Anne Sexton's The Fury of Overshoes

Anne Sexton the author of this poem is considered a confessional poet. Her works are purported to be about her life. She fought depression all of her life so most of her poems reflect this inner struggle.

The title of the poem includes the word fury and since she was depressed she must have fought with some type of angers all of her life until the end. I am not sure what she was angry about unless it was that she was made to attempt to grow up before she was ready. Maybe the poem is about the lack of nurturing a child receives. Maybe it is telling how we want to grow up but fear growing up at the same time.

I can also see the fear when she talks about the wolf under the bed. We can remember literally being afraid of imaginary monsters in the dark when our parents put us to bed and we awaited sleep. I can also see the imaginary fears of the monsters in life. The bad things that happen to us all through our lives can be represented by the wolf waiting under the bed. While we are children we are tered or at least we hope most children are. The child is protected from the world that is out there but as a person grows they must go out into the world and fight all of the monsters that they face. The poem tells of how we are forced to give up the comforts that we have as a child the nightlight, the teddy and the thumb. They are forced to face life without the tools they need to feel safe and secure. They are left without the armor that is needed to protect them from the evil that prevails in the real world. They must go out and earn a living, face the hardship of obtaining a higher education; they must face the people who wish them harm.

One of my earliest memories is of a time that I thought I could swim. I was around three years of age. I jumped into the deep end of the pool to swim. To my surprise I did not swim but began to sink to the bottom. I can still remember thinking, "I can't swim after all." It was surprising to me. I don't even remember fear just amazement that I couldn't do something I believed I was capable of doing. I too understood at that moment that the world was not entirely my own that it "belonged to the big people". I however didn't give up. I went on determined to make the world my own. I get the feeling that the narrator never got that sense of self and that they never reached the point where they could claim the world as their own. This is especially true when you read the line near the end, "When will I get there, taking giant steps all day, each day and thinking nothing of it". I get that she was still longing to live up to what people expected of her. Maybe she was not just looking for what people expected of her but also what she expected of herself. I believe that she just never felt fulfilled as a person