Immigrants at Central Station

The understandings and diversities of each immigrant and their experiences underlies in a range of issues they encounter such as rights, freedoms, beliefs, power, entrapment etc… All of which are a common understanding when used in comparison towards the migrants lives using the poignant aspect of imagery and journey’s within the poem “Immigrants at Central Station, 1951”. The experiences and perceptive in this poem help perceive an understanding of the immigrants experiences towards the new world of which displays the integrity, emotion and suffering towards the new world and we as the readers are engaged into these aspects of life through trains, time, control and journeys.

The imagery of this poem surrounds a train and can represent the physical aspect towards the new world. It starts off straight away with the lines “It was sad to hear, the train’s whistle this morning” straight away using the feature of onomatopoeia, giving the train a more life-like attribute with the use of �whistle’ but also setting the tone of the poem towards a more negative tone using the word “sad”. The stanza continues to portray a sense of loss, sadness and hardship as they await the train with the line “All night it had rained” and has also used the lines “But we ate it all, the silence, the cold and the benevolence of empty streets” to symbolize the environment around them with the mood of the travelers, as the persona combines it with the oppressiveness of the migrants. All of this set the emotion of the poem and symbolizes all the experiences that the migrants go through. This helps portray how the train symbolized the next part of their journey and how at times how depressing their journey can be how the atmosphere around them is mostly gloomy and depressing.

The sense of the control in time within the poem is set by the final lines “White time ran ahead, along glistening tracks of steel’ and is also contrasted with “Time waited anxiously with us” helps represents that time is no longer waiting for them and is actually �running ahead’ as if their future was already implemented further down the track than previously when time was used as a personification of which it �waited with them anxiously.’ Both of these lines give a sense that time is an uncontrollable aspect within our lives and has its own ways as they move towards the next part of their journey. Even though that it seems time has run ahead of them, the word “glistened” also leaves a possibly sign of hope and optimism down the tracks. All of this helps portray that time and control are aspects which cannot always be controlled and helps express how the migrants were �forced’ to take on the life they had with little control and sense