The Street By Octavio Paz Summary

The world of poetry is completely different from the world of prose. It is more compressed. Thus, it requires the readers give themselves willingly to explore and understand poetry. The pleasure of reading comes from the beauty of the language, the delight of the sounds and the images, as well as the power of emotions. Once people can understand the language of poetry, they will realize it is beautiful. “The Street” of Octavio Paz is one of my favorite pieces of poetry (Literary Reference Center). It was written in Spanish in 1963 and was translated to English by Muriel Rukeyser (Literature and the Writing Process). This poem talks about a man who loses hope and direction in life and thinks as if he were not alone. The combination between the sense of hopelessness and the use of metaphor brings the poem to the highest level of analyzing a person’s feeling.
Octavio Paz is a well-known Mexican author. He is the first Mexican writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. No Mexican writer did more to explore and celebrate the mysteries of

The speaker is thinking that someone is following him. He hears that person also “stepping on stones, leaves”. If he runs, that person also runs. However, when he turns, there is nobody there. To this point, the first thing makes me think of is his shadow. Because the shadow always copies the movement of someone exactly. The speaker in the poem just imagines there is somebody also walking down on this street with him because maybe he would be too lonely. He may wish to have a partner. Then he sees “everything dark and doorless”. “Doorless” is an appropriate word choice. It means maybe this person stuck in his life, in a black room with no way out. The street symbolizes his life: dark and doorless. He would feel lost when he could not find a way to get out of the desperate life. There are no options or opportunities for him