Stafford's Poem Fifteen

Society classifies teenagers naive. In William Stafford’s poem “Fifteen” a fifteen year old boy is faced with a challenge. He has to decided whether or not to be the naive teenager society classifies him as, or take a step towards maturity. The theme is maturity and it is developed by the repetitive quote “I was fifteen”(5). The theme is developed to present maturity. At the beginning of the poem the speaker-a young teen-is at a bridge. “Sought of the bridge on Seventeenth I found, back of the willows one summer day”(1-2). The speaker opens the poem with this statement because it symbolizes a bridge. On one side of the bridge was a young teenager who wants to live, but crossing it meant crossing into maturity. The conflict was the object