Young

“Young” begins with an adult speaker reflecting back on her childhood. In Line 1, Sexton uses synecdoche, or the part representing the whole, with “a thousand doors ago” (Line 1), which suggests viewing the speaker’s life many houses, and years, ago. The second line brings in an emotional state for the speaker’s childhood: “a lonely kid” (Line 2). In the third line, she mentions several more details to flesh out her living arrangement. It seems her house was large, as it had “four / garages” (Lines 3-4), suggesting that her family had financial security and/or she came from a large family. In Line 4, she also notes that the particular memory of the poem takes place in the summer. It was not just any summer, however, because in Line 5, she mentions how long the summer was.

In Line 6, the speaker gets even more specific, mentioning her usual nightly activity as lying on the grass. In Line 7, her imagination brings forth visual imagery and personification, ascribing human characteristics to objects, to describe the “clover wrinkling” (Line 7). She goes on further in the next line to describe what is above her: “the wise stars” (Line 8). She personifies the stars to imply that they are getting ready for bed and also able to provide intelligent counsel. In the next few lines, the speaker mentions two of the people she lives with, her parents, and their separate rooms. In Line 9, she uses a metaphor to suggest the heat, or perhaps cigarette smoke, that comes out as a “funnel / of yellow heat” (Lines 9-10). In the next two lines, she compares her father’s “half shut” window to an eye (Line 11) that is on the verge of sleep.

In the next four lines, the speaker focuses on the imagery of the external features of the house, notably the boards, using a simile to compare their whiteness to wax. She also addresses, using hyperbole, or exaggeration, and a metaphor, how “a million leaves” (Line 15) attach themselves to the boards of the house for a sailing adventure. Aural imagery appears in Line 17 with the noisy crickets to round out the experience of the speaker’s summer night observations.

Beginning in Line 18, the speaker turns inward to address that her body is “not a woman’s yet” (Line 19), implying her adolescence or pre-adolescence. The loneliness theme comes into play when the speaker mentions asking questions of the stars above her as if she has no one else to ask, such as her parents. She expands the notion of stars to the idea of God and spirituality, wondering if God is around to see what she sees, as depicted in the last two lines of the poem, which include a list of both observable and abstract things, including heat, her dreams, and the general nighttime.