The poem "The Choosing" by Liz Lochhead tells the story of young woman who runs into her childhood best friend. Seeing her best friend, Mary, causes the speaker to question her decisions in life. The speaker chose to attend high school and then college, while Mary married young and is pregnant. Although the poem was written in 1984, the incident probably happened in the early 1960s as the write was born in 1947. The 1950s and 1960s were a difficult time period for women. Society wanted women to be housewives and mothers; wanting a career was considered unfeminine. The speaker of the poem wonders if she made the right decision by receiving an education instead of following the rest of her generation into young marriages and babies. Diction, tone, and imagery convey the speaker's feelings about her life decisions. .
The first, second, and third stanzas describe the girls" childhood together. The tone in the three stanzas is contentment. The speaker is reminiscing about her past without any of the sadness that is usually attached with recalling one's past. They were both interested in school and were tied for the top of their class. The first stanza uses a lot of repetition with the word equal. This shows that although the girls live two different lives now, they were once the same. They were both polite little girls who strived for excellence. They competed between for the top desk in the class or to read out loud: "Best friends too Mary and I/ a common bond in being cleverest (equal)/ in our small school's small class" (lines 7-9). The speaker had a fear throughout childhood that Mary would be smarter than her and leave her behind: "And my terrible fear/ of her superiority at sums" (lines 15-16). This line breaks the contented feeling of the poem so far. The girls lived in the same apartment building but had very different families. The speaker makes it very clear through repetition that although the houses were the same the families that resided in them were completely different.
