Kate's Essay

Kate Scott
English 09
April 13, 2009
Mr. Salsich
Courage
An Essay About a Poem

If we take the time to look around, we realize that we are surrounded by courage. We see it and use it. Anna Sexton understood this, and explained it well in her poem.


The poem, “Courage”, by Anna Sexton has many themes. One is courage. Throughout the poem she is telling us about courage. Even when we were a little baby, she says we still needed courage to take that first step. Or when we got spanked. You went thought that alone, which took courage. She even talked about death, and how it takes courage. Another theme is growing up. As I said Ms. Sexton talks about taking your first step, then she talks about, “the death of bombs and bullets”. I think that she just wanted to tell the reader about the different stages we go through in life. These phases of life takes a lot of courage to go through.


In my life I use and see courage every day. When I wake up to when I fall back to sleep. It all takes courage. Especially playing sports. When you walk on to the sports field you need to have courage to be aggressive. You also need it if you lose. You need to be able to keep your head held high and hope that the next game, you will do better. I see it in my classmates this year especially, as we have all been working hard, trying to get in to the schools of our choice. We always know that there is a chance we won’t get in, but we have the courage to take a chance and try.


Every day people are courageous, seeing courage, and writing about courage. Anne sexton was someone who understood courage and the different ways people use it.