The theme of "Snaps" is the way in which the girl who is the poem's subject defies gender norms, and to show this theme, the poem moves from conventional images to unconventional images. For example, in the first two stanzas, the poet presents images of a conventional girl who is posed in old snapshots wearing a "white middy," a shirt symbolizing innocence. The girl wears a gold cross "against the clean sweater" and holds her...
The theme of "Snaps" is the way in which the girl who is the poem's subject defies gender norms, and to show this theme, the poem moves from conventional images to unconventional images. For example, in the first two stanzas, the poet presents images of a conventional girl who is posed in old snapshots wearing a "white middy," a shirt symbolizing innocence. The girl wears a gold cross "against the clean sweater" and holds her "hands in your lap's small bounded nest" (this is a metaphor in which the girl's sexuality is restrained). The ethics with which the girl is raised emphasize female innocence and obedience.
The poem goes on to show movement when describing the snapshots, as the camera "noted the strain behind its ease." In other words, the camera, personified, seems to pick up on the girl's subtle rebellion that lurks behind her apparent obedience. Then, the poem moves toward showing the girl's subtle gestures, such as the "small thrust of hip and shoulder" that indicate that she doesn't buy into traditional gender roles. Instead, she is defining her own ethics about what it means to be a woman.
At the end of the poem, the poet looks back at the snapshots years after they were taken and sees "something sleeping" that sends the poet a sign that the girl would go on to rebel against the way she was raised. The poem goes back in time and then shoots forward to the present to suggest that the girl developed and grew into a woman who shook off the restraints of her youth and who developed new ideas of how to be a woman.
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