Humanity 101 is a poem by Denise Duhamel.

In the poem, the narrator takes the position of someone

who mean well and have a lot of high expectation for the world but is yet to achieve what she wants to
achieve. She believes and thinks that he has failed but on the journey to success she takes “Humanity
101” which is a class people take to get successful as human beings.

The speaker in this poem is a student who goes ahead to take a course about humanity in general. What
we know about this speaker is that he or she wants to be successful as a human being and that is why he
enrolls in a humanity course. Based on the poem the speaker is a kind of person that wants well for
humanity and that is why she strives for success as a person. In the poem there is a auditor and that is
the professor who is teaching the student on how to be successful as a person.

The situation in this poem is that the student want to learn how to become a better person. She enrolls
in a course not to get credits but to become better. However, she has to take remedial classes because
she has been left behind a lot. She says in the poem, “I take Remedial Humanity where I’d learn the
basics that I’d missed so far. I may have been a non-traditional student, (par1, 8,9). After getting in the
course she thinks that she would not make and the professors urges her to continue and that she will
make it, the course involves a lot of things such as visiting the prison and even the day centers. Narrator
says, “We took field trips to nursing homes, prisons, day-care centers. We stood near bedsides or sat on
the floor to color with strange little people” (Par 4, 1,2,3).

The event in this poem is important because it reminds us about humanity and why we need to look
other from the point of ourselves and their perspectives as well. we need to be successful as human
beings. That is the significance of this poem.