Theme Of Fences By Pat Mora - 929 Words

Pat Mora’s â€Å"Fences† is a delicate poem that deals with the timely issues of class divide and privilege. She begins her poem on a positive note, saying â€Å"Mouths full of laughter,† which creates this safe and harmless tone. The next line, she uses the word â€Å"turistas,† which is interesting; Mora uses a Spanish word (tourist in English) to indicate possibly the ethnicity of the speaker. It is not until the last few lines of the poem, however, when the reader can also detect the class and likely status of the speaker, when the speaker’s mother says, â€Å"It’s their beach,† after seeing the speaker’s younger sister running across the sand where the affluent tourists are. At only 19 lines, â€Å"Fences† is a relatively short poem, but Mora’s use of†¦show more content†¦The next six lines (or next sentence) heightens the living standards of the affluent tourists, which heightened the contrast betwee n living styles between the ‘turistas’ and the speaker. First, the speaker does not even see the tourists from a completely clear distance--she has to â€Å"peek† through the cactus fence. Here, the speaker sees how the women rub oil onto themselves that is â€Å"sweeter than honey† and children being playful, sipping on drinks with â€Å"long straws, coconut white, mango yellow.† This alone shows the options that these tourists have that may seem privileged to the speaker, for it was her and her family, there would only be plastic straws to basic drinks. The careful attention to what the tourists have and what they do (compared to the lack of attention in regards to the speaker) furthers the notion of class divide and status. Finally, the next six final lines of the poem explicitly show the class division between the speaker and the tourists. Mora states that, â€Å"Once my little sister / ran barefoot across the hot sand / for a taste† (13-16), she ends on a period, almost hoping that her sister would be able to run across the side where the rich tourists are, to perhaps play with the joyful children, to be equal to them; if the poem had ended here, it would have been difficult to identify an absolute interpretation of the class division and privilege (and to