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In Use of Symbolism
This is one poem that, I believe, would make a very good plot for the show,
The XFiles. Not only does it give you the creeps, upon further readings, your
neck hair actually stands on-end causing an unassailable feeling to regard your
family pet with renewed scrutiny. Louise Erdrich masterfully uses symbolism in
the meaning of her poem appropriately titled, The Strange People.
In the very first stanza she sets up the scene innocently enough,
All night I am the doe, breathing
His name in a frozen field,
The small mist of the word
Drifting always before me, (902.1-4).
At first, I thought someone was pretending to imitate a doe, an innocent deer
that was thinking of someone, or some man. You can picture this calmly enough in
your mind; a deer laying on frost laden meadow at night so cold you can see its'
breath, peaceful thought right?
Then, the poem continues to illustrate a hunting scene where the doe's heart
explodes with the impasse of hot gunmetal killing it instantly, and you as the
reader start thinking of Bambi of course, but there is something odd here,
And again he has heard it
And I have gone burning
To meet him, the jacklight
Fills my eyes with blue fire,
The heart in my chest
Explodes like a hot stone, (902.5-10).
Why would the doe go, "…burning / to meet him…"(902.2-3)? Why
wouldn't she flee as soon as she sensed the slightest danger, and why has she
heard it "again"? This doesn't sound like survival instinct to me,
this is predatory, something is more than odd, something is wrong.
In addition to this, upon the first reading of the third stanza you become a
little confused. You understand the hunter has killed the doe and then has
thrown her into the back of his pick-up truck, yet the author describes,
I wipe the death scum
From my mouth, sit up laughing,
And shriek in my speeding grave. (902.13-15).
All of a sudden, you realize there are more entities here than just the
innocent doe and an unsuspecting hunter out for a kill. Someone, or something
else, is on a hunt of "its'" own. So far, you've concluded, in a
timorous manner, there is something sinister in the works. Things are not as
they seem, and your fear is now for the hunter.
In the forth stanza, not unlike the strange episodes of The XFiles,
all is revealed in its grand oddity and fearsome persona.
Safely shut in the garage,
When he sharpens his knife
and thinks to have me, like that,
I come toward him,
a lean gray witch,
through the bullets that enter and dissolve, (902.16-21).
Here we see our involved fear in vain. He has killed the hunter, no doubt.
Yet, the author describes him as "a lean gray witch" but in further
explication, I believe this statement describes the gun of which the hunter used
to slay the doe, "through the bullets that enter and dissolve." This
possession of the doe and culprit of death, I believe, is an evil spirit of
sorts.
The author then reveals the full circle of events in the last stanza,
I sit in his house drinking coffee till dawn,
And leave as frost reddens on hubcaps,
crawling back into my shadowy body.
All day, asleep in clean grasses,
I dream of the one who could really wound me, (903.22-27).
Yet, she leaves room to ponder in the last line. This evil spirit has a fear
of his own, for the one who could do it harm, yet he seems invincible in his
deathly deeds.
The use of symbolism to describe this evil creature is keenly thought out.
The author has left it to the reader to decipher this meaning with only a few
words to mention this demonstrative being. As with this poem, Erdirich has also
used symbolism in her poem Jacklight, but in an opposite effect. She describes,
what I believe, are hunted animals, but uses symbolism to refer to the hunters
carrying jacklights in their chase for them. As if the animals are mystified as
to what these creatures are that hunts them, she uses the animal's sense of
smell to analyze in this stanza,
We smell them behind it
But they are faceless, invisible.
We smell the raw steel of their gun barrels,
Mink oil on leather, their tongues of sour barley.
We smell their mothers buried chin-deep in wet dirt.
We smell their fathers with scoured knuckles,
Teeth cracked from hot marrow, (901.14-20).
Symbolism, in this form, is truly a powerful and deceptively descriptive tool
in literature. To reach into symbolism all you have to do is ask the question,
"Why," when reading a seemingly incomprehensible verse, such as this
one from the same poem, "We smell their sisters of crushed dogwood, bruised
apples, / of fractured cups and concussions of burnt hooks," (902.21-22).
We ask, "why do they smell these abstract statements?" Then we take a
closer look at the relationship between 'sisters' and ask why would the dogwood
be crushed, the apples be bruised, cups fractured as well as the reference to
concussions? The only conclusion could be that the demented character of these
savage hunters were either beating, but more likely raping, their sisters and
their perverse deeds horridly pervaded the hunted animal's sense of smell.
As we can see the art of symbolism provides yet another realm of
characterization through evasive descriptions of the subject's surroundings. To
do so, masterfully, is an art I hope to unearth in time. To so cleverly give
name by surrounding descriptions is very useful in poetry as well as the
tantalizing unanswered questions of a truly good novel.
P.s. - I found this assignment to be creatively difficult. It was hard to
categorize the assigned readings into the different aspects of stylistic
devices. I hope I've explained the approach adequately in the two examples
above. I'm not sure…
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