Analysis of “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith

Josh Robinson Dr. Joyce Huff ENG 206 Feb 5, 2013 Not Waving nevertheless Drowning People may not always be exactly what they go through on the revealside just as a meter may pick up a deeper meaning than the falsehood that is just on the surface. The song Not Waving unless Drowning by Stevie Smith is a vast example of this. The pen does a very good job at relating the death of a objet dartkind by drowning and the reaction it causes in separates to the deeper story of how the human beings is symbolically calling let out to others who never come to serve well him get his life history together.In the beginning of the poesy, the inaugural two run alongs atomic number 18 fair confusing. It refers to the main character as the dead man plainly hence in the next line it mentions how he is moaning. This is confusing of course because as we all know, a dead man cant acquire sounds. The next sentence though, watchms more straightforward at first discern but as you move farther in the poem its meaning might not be so obvious. In the chip stanza thither is a change from what seems to be the dead man oratory to others talking about what he was like when he was alive.It shows how, to other people, the man seemed happy, but it also seems as though the author means to take the impression that other people think that it was this one event that caused the man to finally break cumulus. He says in the next stanza however that it was to a fault cold always which I think shows that he is saying that it was not merely one event that caused him to drown. His entire life consisted of comer out to others for help but he never received it. In the beginning of the second stanza I would also like to point out how the author added Poor chap severalized with a comma.I think the commas are likely used to emphasize that label that the author puts on the man from the viewpoint of others. It, in a way, shows how others may pity this man because of how great h e had it until this single event. This is ironic because if you read the poem more than once, youll see that in the last stanza he is essentially saying in the deuce-ace line, I was much too far out all my life, that he was suffering not only in the his last moments but throughout his entire life.If you look at the ways that the poem is create verbally out, it kind of helps to separate the different clues that the author gives to you. In the very first line, it uses commas to separate the dead man. Even though it didnt separate any of the other instances of the author referring to the man as dead, I think that it is written in this way so that you will ready that it might not mean dead in the literal sniff out of the vocalize but in a more symbolic sense. As though to help that idea be emphasized each sentence that you come across that phrase.Also, if you noticed, And not waving but drowning was used both(prenominal) at the termination of the first stanza as well as the end of the last stanza. In the first stanza it is used merely as a way to get you to recognize the importance of it when it comes around again. It is placed here with the arrangement that its true meaning may not be as clear until the next time that you see it. When you see it again though, you discombobulate enough information to where you can start coming to conclusions about what the author truely meant to symbolize when he give tongue to that the man was drowning.In the second stanza, They said is placed in a line on its own which is different compared to the rest of the poem. It seems as if it was put there separately to draw assist to the contrast between what others thought of this man and how he knew his life to be as well as showing the importance of both it and the line before it, which is also abnormal in the fact that it is quite a bit longer than the rest of the lines in the poem. There are legion(predicate) poems that say one thing but completely mean another.Not ev erything is nigrify and white in poetry just as in other art forms. Some may be more difficult than others to see a different meaning behind the text but through clever uses of words, imagery, and symbols just about any poem can be examined more closely for different meanings, thoughts, or ideas that the author is trying to convey. Poems should be broken down and examined in sections. Each section may have different clues as to what the authors underlying meaning could be. This makes understanding the poem as a whole a lot easier.I nominate it very helpful in this poem (and other poems), as we wise(p) in class, to read into things more and question everything. There could be a simple object that creates a completely different meaning to the poem once you find out its significance. Also, finding multiple definitions or even definitions you might not know such as the word larking was very helpful. I didnt quite know the meaning of that word, but in looking it up, I basically came u p with my entire crease for what I thought the meaning of the poem was.Figuring out a poem is almost like figuring out a puzzle. The only real difference is, the pieces arent cut out for you. You have to look at the bigger picture and find the logical pieces to cut out and whence examine them individually. When you are done looking at them and figure out how to put them back together they could very well become a completely different picture from the one that you had originally broken down into pieces.