Monday, April 13, 2015

"The Mower Against the Garden": Political Argument?


I am fascinated by the use of The Mower as narrator in "The Mower Against the Garden". When I first read the poem, I read The Mower as an inanimate object given an omniscient third person perspective. I then read through the notes, which noted that "Mower" refers to "one who cuts grass with a scythe." As I read the poem more closely I noticed that the poem never mentions the mower. That is, while the subject of the poem is the narrator, the poem is not self-referential. The only pronoun used to refer to the speaker is "us," in the final line, "The Gods themselves with us do dwell." I have interpreted this space in which "The Gods' dwell with 'us" to be nature, specifically, nature in its purist state. This identification is interesting because The Mower's occupation is involved in maintaining the separation between nature and society. The relationship of the poem to the narrator suggests a political argument about how we can become occupationally identified with processes that work against our own values and desires. I did a little more research into the history and character of Marvell and found that this struggle with contradictory identifications would have been an issue in his political career.

What do you all think? Too speculative? 

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