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Lethem's essay reveals the ways in which his childhood, past experiences, and imagination shaped this station to be a kind of monolithic fantasy. He first begins by explaining its importance, and illustrating how that importance came about through a series of personal stories. As the essay progresses, the reader sees how, more than anything, Hoyt-Schermerhorn has become a place where his imagination has run rampant; as we see in his detailed imitation of the "Wisconsin Death Trip," this train station is the living novella of his daydreams, barely grounded by the historical and mundane context of the actual structure.
Bishop's poem is much more abstract, with a meaning that could be taken in many different ways. However, in the context of the subway system, Bishop seems to focus on the new relationship that man has with the sky after being underground for so long. She questions which is the real home of the Man-Moth, above or below ground? The underground is an escape for the Man-Moth, a prison, but also a symbol of his own choice, and what that says about him.
Comparatively, the subway is an even stranger urban space than a streetwise neighborhood or business district because it almost defies nature. As Bishop delicately suggests, underground habitation may be unnatural, a theory that Lethem almost echos in his fantastical imaginings of the subway. But if so, what does this say about the progression of civilization and urbanization? Are we willing to subvert nature in order to keep expanding? And when we begin to prefer this, perhaps false, underground parody of above ground, what does this mean?