Tour Analysis

In "Tour," Carol Snow uses an indifferent tone and imagery to paint the picture of a person coming across a shrine in Japan. The image of a "swept path" and "camellia blossoms" allows the reader to think that the character in the poem is beautifying the shrine. In the next stanza, however, the speaker says, "Or — we had no way of knowing — he'd swept the path between fallen camellias," which suggests that the person didn't mean to make the shrine beautiful and that he actually didn't care because it was an accident. The poem suggests the idea that certain things in life are not important to some people as they are to others. Whoever made the shrine probably had a deep connection to it but a person walking near it might not have a similar connection.