Elizabeth Bishop Poem Analysis

Who am I? One of the simplest and most common questions a person asks, yet it may be the hardest question to answer. The sheer complexity of it is enough to discourage anyone from even attempting to find an answer. Despite that, many will embark on a journey to discover themselves, whether it’s a twenty-one year old recent graduate who doesn’t know what they’re doing with their life, a man in his eighties whose contemplating the life he lived, or a young girl who has been sheltered away in a small town in Massachusetts. Elizabeth Bishop was this girl and thus most of her poems all have a central theme of struggling to find a sense of belonging and/or human experiences of misery and longing. (Poetry Foundation) Specifically in her poem “In …show more content…
The prevalence of symbolism throughout the poem helps Bishop communicate the idea of how a child’s sudden introduction to the confusing and unfamiliar can be a terrifying experience. While her aunt was being worked on at the dentist office, Elizabeth sat in the waiting room and, “...[while I] waited I read/ the National Geographic /(I could read) and carefully /studied the photographs...a dead man slung on a pole...babies with pointed heads...” For a large portion of the poem the National Geographic magazine plays a momentous role in Elizabeth’s sudden identity crisis. She’s merely six years old and she lives in a small town in Massachusetts, sheltering her from the outside world. However, this magazine serves as a lens to the new and unknown with “babies with pointed heads” and dead men on poles. These images fascinate and terrify her to the point of questioning her entire existence and how she fits into this exotic, mysterious, and complicated world. While reading through the poem, one will notice the recurring use of dark imagery such as, “...the inside of a volcano/black, and full of ashes...” or “I was saying it to stop/ the sensation of falling