The initial description of the cabdriver portrays him as a tough, stern New Yorker. The speaker’s brief and matter-of-fact statements describing the situation give off a very unemotional tone as he analyzes this man. This poem is greatly a commentary on human connections and the simplicity of our relationships with people we encounter daily. Everyday we come across hundreds of people especially in a populous city such as New York. As a cabdriver you come in contact with a variety of people but are only with them from point A to point B and in reality how much do you actually get to know about the majority of those people or moreso how much effort are the majority of passengers putting in to get to know their cabdriver, sadly very little. Though the cabdriver may seem cold in his interactions with the other friendly cabdriver as well as the speaker/passenger, I think he is just aware of the sad fact that so many people are too self-concerned much of the time to get to know the people around them; in that we are limiting our own opportunities for human connection. It is very easy to feel lost and insignificant in the large group of people which constitute the population of NYC. Even interactions like that of the cabdriver who “bows like a king” may seem somewhat false and the fact that he is being aligned with a king give off the sense that his actions are self-righteous and he acts as though he is superior. And the brief glimpse of a smile which the speaker sees on the mouth of the cabdriver conveys a small ember of hope that there are still members of society who see him as more than just a mode of transportation and dehumanize him in such a way, that there is still genuine compassion left in humanity.