Bus Riders Analysis

An Analysis of
“Bus Riders”
Gloria Garchitorena-Goloy

The poem, “Bus Riders”, Gloria Gatchitorena-Goloy, is a symbolic poem written in free verse, the central theme of hardship can be found in the poem’s use of imagery, language and connotation of every word by which the meaning is implied. In her poem, these three fundamentals of writing smoothly work together to create a piece that represents the exhaustion and depressing characteristic of commuting by a public transportation like the bus.

On the first reading, the poem begins with the image of the commuters, when she describes them and compare to an even-toed, hoofed mammals (ruminants) that are always on the run when they are about to ride to this public transportation, the bus. She also stated an image where the mental state of the commuters is based and measured by the depth and distance of their dreams, which means that for us, the level of experience. It could be more stressful or less stressful; important or not to them of the commuting via this public transportation. Just for our example, a fresh graduate is about to have his first interview in a big company, he needs to be on time or else his dreams of becoming one of the employees of that company will vanish that instant compare to that of a commuter who just want to commute to get to point A to point B, like tourist, shopper etc. These ruminants on the run, when they travel, travel a mobile mental mileage metered by depth and distance of their dreams…

In the next lines, it literally this would suggest or describes commuters inside the bus where:

…a stern silence isolates their brotherhood from each to each even where a truant thigh kneads against its sudden mate. (How well the guise is glared.)

Means that inside the bus you are about to experience the silence of the people got in. Because they just to be quiet for the sake of others, perhaps they just want to avoid adding stress or annoyance inside. And it states here also that the commuters doesn’t noticed or felt their contact to others. They just ignore if they bump each other’s body.

Goloy also uses a variety of imagery to illustrate the state or atmosphere inside the bus. First, she describes the bus an overweight, less of flesh, more of mood which means that inside the vehicle people experienced a state where the exhaustion maybe stress lingers throughout the entire bus. Just because of the people inside are like being chained to their feet and trap by this vehicle. This imagery describes how hard it is to travel in this situation.

The vehicle screams an overweight, less of flesh, more of mood ferried burdensomely with heavy fettered lives sitting out a fleeing trap by the windows of the mind.