17 pages • 34 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeKindness
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Food
Food elements are used as a recurring motif throughout the poem, as both literal images and figurative devices. In the first stanza, the speaker describes the future as “salt in a weakened broth” (Line 4), using the image to communicate the insubstantial nature of a certain future as well as to enhance the overall setting. The sense of place within the poem is one of struggle, and the image of a weakened broth as a food source adds dimension to the world the speaker is immersed in. Toward the end of the first stanza, the speaker describes the food around them: “the passengers eating maize and chicken” (Line 12). The specificity brings the setting to life and enhances the cultural tone of the poem.
In the third stanza, the speaker revisits food in a distant and figurative way as the speaker imagines the guiding influence that kindness can have: “only kindness that ties your shoes / and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread” (Lines 28-29). The poem does not specify eating or purchasing bread, but rather “gazing” at it. Here, food becomes a focal point for the people surrounding the speaker. The bread is a symbol of a larger ideal—the people work to ensure their basic survival, and kindness is the only thing that keeps them going in the face of hopelessness and despair. Food and kindness are presented as two complementary necessities of life; food supports the physical body, while kindness supports the spirit.
Transport
Transportation and movement play an important role within the poem. The narrative in its entirety can be seen as a scene that plays out in the speaker’s mind while they’re sitting on a bus, passing from one spatial point to another. However, the poem presents the idea that there may be no fixed destination point after all: “How you ride and ride / thinking the bus will never stop” (Lines 10-11). Here, the bus becomes symbolic of something bigger: a forward motion over which the speaker has no control.
In the second stanza, the poem reaches the speaker’s observation of the dead man. Here, the image of the roadside is as pivotal as the human body lying on it. There is an implication that this unnamed man was stopped mid-journey, unable to move forward or backward on the road, caught eternally in one place. This thematic idea is further emphasized through the lines:
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans (Lines 17-19).
While on one level this reflects the physical journey the speaker is taking on the bus, and the man’s physical journey between destinations, it also serves as a metaphor for the larger journey through life.
In the final stanza, the poem introduces an image of movement on foot: “only kindness that ties your shoes / and sends you out into the day” (Lines 28-29). This implies a new forward trajectory, and a sense that kindness can carry one forward onto the next stage of the journey.
The Future
Although the poem takes place within the boundaries of a short scene, it uses the concept of the future to open it to the wider world. In the first stanza, the speaker says, “you must lose things, / feel the future dissolve in a moment” (Lines 2-3). By placing this idea early in the poem, the writer establishes the future as a thematic idea that will become a continuing thread throughout the narrative.
The speaker goes on to say, “What you held in your hand, / what you counted and carefully saved, / all this must go” (Lines 5-7). Here, the future is implied to be a kind of currency. Notably, this reference is set against a backdrop of socioeconomic disparity; for many, a collection of currency would literally become a collection of time. The future would need to be carefully assembled and guarded at risk of losing it completely. But by presenting the future as something that can “dissolve in a moment / like salt in a weakened broth” (Lines 3-4), the speaker communicates the ephemerality of personal direction and the concept that the future is something shifting and alive.
The contradiction presented in the poem is that one can only know true kindness by watching the future dissolve; however, the future doesn’t truly disappear in this moment—if it did, there would be nothing left to know, no consciousness with which to perceive it. Instead, the future changes shape, violently transforming from an imagined landscape to a new, uncertain one.
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By Naomi Shihab Nye
