The Social Commentary Of Sharon Olds '' Rite Of Passage'

Children often act on primitive instincts when socializing with other children, When you combine this with children 's natural propensity to imitate the adults around and you end up with a toxic mix of misunderstanding and violence. This is the the social commentary presented Sharon Olds’ free verse poem “Rite Of Passage”.
Children act animalistic when socializing with other children. When the children start to “jostling, jockeying for place”(6) it clearly demonstrates how the kids act like male animals in the wild, trying to assert their dominance over the weaker and feeble males. Thus, displaying that from a young age boys try to establish themselves as a dominate male. Furthermore, this is continued to be proven when the children assert themselves over the youngest male. The seven year old child says “I could beat you up../..to a six”(12-13) thus, displaying the children 's futher animalistics insects and how the child tries to establish himself as the alpha male over the young and lesser child. This illuminates the fact that children will try to assert themselves as the dominant over younger children.

The child “They clear their/ throats a lot, a room of small bankers”(10-11) this illustrates that children in attemt to seem marture imic the action of their parents and pretend as they were businessmen in an important meeting,while in reality they are just a group of children talking about nonsense. This demonstrates that children will copy the action of the adults around them as an effort to be grown up. Furthermore, the children 's mimicry of the adults around theme to seem more mature is continuously proven; when the children “ relax and get down