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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Material versus Immaterial

“In a Station of the Metro” is characterized by an overriding tension between the material and the immaterial. This tension arises in the poem’s first line: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd.” On a literal level, the speaker is describing the faces of actual people who make up a crowd. However, the speaker’s use of the word “apparition” introduces a startling suggestion of immateriality. An apparition is not a material form of presence. Instead, the word implies something supernatural and ethereal, more like the haunting presence of a ghost. Thus, the first line of the poem establishes a potentially unsettling tension between the materiality of the world and the immateriality of experience. The poem’s second line sustains the tension between the material and the immaterial by using the implied logic that links it to the first line. That is, the speaker implies that the apparition-like faces of people in the crowd are like “petals on a wet, black bough.” This link superimposes a concrete impression of material reality onto a subjective perception of immateriality.

Urban versus Natural

The contrast between urban and natural imagery figures prominently in “In a Station of the Metro.” As the title suggests, the poem takes place in a decidedly urban environment. That is, the speaker is recording a particular moment they experienced while passing through a metro station. Like other urban spaces, the metro station is characterized by its crowdedness. Whereas the first line describes this crowded urban environment, the second line abandons all reference to the human world. Contrasting starkly with the bustling station, the second line offers a peaceful image of the natural world in spring: “Petals on a wet, black bough.” The speaker doesn’t set up a tension between the urban and natural worlds, nor do they insist on the primacy or superiority of one over the other. Instead, they merely contrast them in such a way that the reader begins to see aspects of each in the other. For their part, the speaker sees a resemblance between the apparition-like faces of the people in the station and petals suspended on a wet tree branch. This resemblance suggests an unspoken continuity between urban and natural spaces.

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