Not waving but drowning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Not waving but drowning - Essay ExampleIn each of these states, whether European or American, people were experiencing a great deal of alienation and isolation as a result of these tremendous changes. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, to find the desolation and isolation of this period reflected as a major theme in the poetry created during this period such as Not wave but Drowning by Stevie Smith.The isolation is almost overwhelming in Smiths poem as she begins with the desolate lonely cry of a man that nobody key outs. Although he is introduced as being dead, zip hear him, the dead man, / But still he lay moaning (1-2), making himself known to someone. This introduction presents several(prenominal) possibilities as to his true condition. The first is that the man is only symbolically dead, dead on the inside, and so is physically alive and able to moan in his continued pain and loneliness. He could also be so close to death that there is no possibility of saving him before hes gone, and hes moaning in anticipation of the inevitable. Another possibility is that he is actually dead, but there reside a few possibilities as to his continued moaning. The pain and anguish of his death might have been similarly much for him to bear and thus he is still moaning even after death. Finally, the suggestion that nobody heard him invokes the sense of the ghostly, so that perhaps the man is moaning in the form of a ghost, attempting to warn those who can hear of the dangers of allowing individuals to become too isolated from society. The words that Smith provides him in the second portion of this stanza further try the sense of isolation and failed attempts at connection. The dead man says, I was much further out than you horizon / And not waving but drowning (3-4). This indicates that whether he was alive or dead, this man never felt as close to his fellow humans as they perceived him to be and, as a result, they were unable to have a go at it the signs of distres s he was sending