When first reading Gwynn's poem, it's necessary to understand its literal meaning. To do this, the reader needs to consider who the characters are, their setting, what they are doing, who the narrator is and any problems that exist. In "The Classroom at the Mall," the narrative concerns the last session of a college literature class being taught in a shopping mall storefront during Christmas rush. The main character is the instructor, who feels pressured to pass everyone in the class no matter how poorly they do. Other characters include the small group of students and the customers walking around the mall outside the classroom's glass walls. The main problem is the instructor's unhappiness. He has as little to say as his students and feels as fake as the commercialized religiosity of the season.
Subsequent readings of the poem allow the reader to look for motifs. These are key ideas, actions, character traits or images that contribute to the underlying message the author wants to communicate -- the poem's overall theme. Interpretations of theme vary from one reader to another, but should always be supported by details from the poem. One way to state the theme of Gwynn's poem is that it criticizes commercialism dominating both education and religion. The opening stanza expresses the narrator's suspicion that the college's "Dean of Something" decided to rent space in the mall for purposes of "PR" rather than his stated purpose of making college "accessible to all." Later, the narrator mentions a statue of the Virgin Mary outside the classroom door that "Adores her infant with a glassy eye." Both details communicate fakery and insincerity, thus supporting the interpretation of the theme as concerning cynicism about consumer culture.
Sometimes an author will use a dark sense of humor to communicate feelings of dissatisfaction about the surrounding world. Gwynn's use of irony is one of his trademark literary elements and appears immediately in his poem's first stanza when the narrator explains that his classroom space once housed a bookstore that went bankrupt. It seems fitting for a lackluster literature class to occupy the same space since it is bankrupt in its own way. Then the narrator extends his acid wit to his class, referring to it as "three hours deep in Dante's Hell." He notices a weary shopper telling her children "what is sold" in the store where he works as a "animated dummy" and an "academic Santa Claus" handing out passing grades. These literary elements make the problem clear: The teacher feels like he is just as fake as his classroom.
To analyze poetic mood, it's essential to look at basic poetic elements, such as tone, rhythm and rhyme. Gwynn's poem sounds conversational and jokingly snide. The tone is satirical; the beat seems casual. However, the poem's message is dark and its structure formal with each stanza six lines long and unvarying in its end rhyme pattern of ABCCAB. This unusual pattern creates a bouncy, playful beat that is at odds with the poem's viewpoint and suggests a feeling of cynicism.