On The Death Of Our Son By Toni Harper Poem Analysis

When using Vendler’s thirteen steps to describe a poem step number six is titled the skeleton, which she defines it as the emotional curve “on which the whole poem is arranged” (132). “We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper” by Michael Harper, is about the death of his newborn son, Reuben Masai Harper. Since the emotional curve is about a father mourning for the death of his son this poem is an elegy. Most elegies follow the emotional pattern of deep mourning for the dead—possibly a few praises about their life and how they lived—then ends with some kind of solace or acceptance that the deceased is gone. However, Harper does not completely follow this pattern instead he deviates from the traditional pattern of an elegy. Vendler …show more content…
As mentioned above, Harper did not know his child thus he has no choice but to describe the only thing he could associate with his son. Harper and the child’s mother probably did not even get to hold their son because he mentions the child living in an isolette that was probably located behind the “twin-thick window[ed]” nursery.” Hence, all Harper can do is assume that his son will learn “to accept pure oxygen/ as the natural sky,” and he can only assume what his child is feeling. The third stanza differs in that it introduces an outside person to the poem. “A woman who’d lost her first son” tries to console the couple with an angel. However, it does not seem like Harper was consoled because right away he returns to the medical terms he used in the first two stanzas: “…consoled us with an angel gone ahead/ to pray for our family—/gone into that sky/ seeking oxygen,/ gone into autopsy…a disposable cremation.” In a few lines, the tone rapidly changes from comfort to indifference as he associates the angel the woman tried to console them with to the oxygen the son could not learn to accept, to his death, and then to his “disposable cremation.” It is as if this was Harper’s thought process and he did …show more content…
In this way, the speech act of assuming is an act of detaching because “we assume” is a statement on Harper’s attitude towards his son’s death. Harper does not invest himself to his child’s death probably because if he did it would be too difficult for him to bear. This idea can be seen again with the third stanza as Harper is given the opportunity to accept his son’s death but refuses to in the end, so he reverts back to his technical terms. The fact that the parents never knew their child also adds to the distance between them. The distance or detachment then adds to the uncertainty because they never had the chance to know their child as a