The thing that immediately stood out to me about "Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter" was the choice of the phrase “brown
study” as a replacement for death. Brown study is used to describe a deep
contemplation accompanied by a gloomy mood. Now this could simply be a literal description
of how the girl looks, but I chose to read this as the speaker projecting his
own emotional state on to the girl. Her death forces him to put himself in her
shoes and face fragility of life in relation to his own being. This explains
the emotion distance the poem holds away from the girl. While the speaker doesn’t
seem to detest the girl, he also never seems to be overly remiss at her passing, mostly just surprised. This is clearest in the second to last line where the speaker describes
the community as “vexed” at her passing. There are many words that could have
carried more emotional weight but he instead chooses a word marginally more
powerful than annoyed. This leads me to believe the poem isn’t intended to be about the girl, but rather how
the death of another can snap us into an awareness of our own mortality.
I agree that this poem seems to be more about the speaker's reaction to the girl's death rather than the death itself. The speaker choice of words made me think they were attempting to distance them self from the girl to avoid any emotional reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe word "vexed" was what really stood out to me. I feel like the speaker was truly annoyed that the life of a child had been taken. While I agree with what you said about the poem being about "awareness of our own mortality," I also feel like the speaker was projecting their annoyance of the situation towards their believed higher power.
i enjoyed the last sentence the most. The loss of a loved one can become very powerful in how we contine to move forward from that point, wether or not we really live and how carrying the loss of that.
ReplyDelete