Weed vs Flower

The poem "Identity" by Julio Noboa Polanco is interesting. It can be defined as a metaphor about how the poet, would rather be an ugly, smelly weed living on the edge of a cliff than to be a pretty flower in a flower pot. It probably means that the poet wants to be free minded, be able to make their own choices and preferably not be like everyone else. Making your own identity means creating your voice/point of view, personality and attitude. Everyone has to formulate their own identity and assert it to others.

 Identity is something that makes yourself different from others and is your way of understanding the world. Throughout the poem, the author juxtaposes the two kinds of plants - the weeds and the flowers. The set of imagery the poet chose shows metaphors for two different perspectives on life. The poet refers that the people around him are flowers and himself as a weed "Let them be as flowers, always watered, fed, guarded, admired, but harnessed to a pot of dirt. I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed, clinging on cliffs, like an eagle wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks."(Stance 1 and 2) what the author states in this quote is that to him, some people around the world act as they are perfect, but on the inside, they are just caged or "harnessed to a pot of dirt."(Line 3) 

The poet here refers to himself as a weed because the poet is true to himself. The poet prefers to be free and the way the poet is, no matter how ugly the poet is or how the poet doesn't share the same views as everyone else. The poet then refers to flowers as the other people around him or "society" in general. These flowers are to be handled by someone else and don't live the way they want. Personally, as a teenager, I can assume that there are more flowers than weeds. Teens prefer to stick to the things that society advertises to them instead of not being true to themselves. Some teens do things that they don't want to like drink, smoke or even change the way they dress because of the influence of either their peers or the rest of society.

In the picture above there are multiple "people" shown and only one

of them is different (being red) indicating the number of people that

are weed instead of a flower.

 These actions get them nowhere, and it gives them more problems in the future. When I was in grade 8, I start becoming a flower, started dressing like my friends just to fit in. The main message the poet was trying to convey In the poem, is that the people that surround him and the people in the society are flowers, which are people who follow a trend in society instead of being yourself. The poet distances himself from that identity and instead, the poet refers to himself as being a weed, which is free and is all about being yourself. It could be about him just trying to get away with what he was before, a flower.