In “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds, the speaker is on a train and finds herself across a man, she describes has “the casual cold look of a mugger.” It is not clear as to why she sees him as a mugger, but he is larger than her. As the poem unfolds, we get a better look at her thinking process and the differences between the speaker and the man. “He is wearing red, like the inside of the body exposed” is a simile the poet used to express how simple and open the man looked; by comparing him to an open body. On the other hand, she is in a fur coat. She catches the man looking at her coat, while she examines his face. This is important because the man doesn’t make eye contact with her, he doesn’t look at her in the face. She then wonders