What ideas or feelings seem most significant to you? Why?

The key idea for me was that all the poems related to the essential question “What does it mean to be an insider or an outsider?” Society has evolved immensely throughout the generations, yet there are still people who judge others of not being “normal”. This is not right because who are we to judge others? Our world has been striving for equality for numerous generations yet there are still people who exclude and discriminate. The five poems all include characters that have their own unique identity. The difficult part is finding who you are without allowing other people to influence your overall identity. No one is considered a permanent outsider, because there is always somewhere in the world that you can relate to. For example, if a Japanese immigrant moves to France they may feel like an “alien” (an outsider), but in Japan they would feel more “comfortable” (an insider). “Richard Cory” was someone who was superior to everyone else and stood out in the crowd. The reason he committed suicide may have been that he felt like he was “different”, which made him lonely. “I am from swing sets and jungle gyms,” was a poem that expressed the childhood of an average person. They talk about going to school, visiting grandma’s house, and playing hide and go seek. If you do not go through these experiences or do things differently, does that make you an outsider? How can we judge people just because they do not act the same way we act? The poems make me realize that our world would be quite dull and repetitive if everyone had the same personality. An “outsider” is someone who is not in an environment that supports his or her identity. Whereas, an “insider”, is someone whose identity matches up with the environment that surrounds him or her. Overall, the main message for me is that people always want to fit into the “normal category” in society, but that is an idealistic and unattainable goal.