Analysis of Elegy for Jane: my student thrown by a horse, by Theodore Roethke

Elegyfor Jane

(My

student,

thrown

by

horse)

I And

remember her

the quick

neckcurls, look,

limp a

and sidelong

damp

as pickerel

tendrils; smile;

In Elegy for Jane, Theodore Roethke compiles images that are most unelegiac in nature. The definition of an elegy is a poem in memory of a deceased acquaintance. Its tone should be somber and it is devoid of humor.

Ask anyone who has read this poem long ago or even recently and theyll more than likely say, Oh, yeah! The sidelong pickerel smile. An elegy is supposed to be mournful, but who can remain unamused when a girls smile is related not just to a fish but to a singularly unhandsome one. Line ones description of neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils is less arresting but certainly does not focus on aspects of beauty.

And And

how, she

once

startled balanced

into in

talk, the

the

light delight

syllables of

leaped her

for

her,

thought,

The remainder of the opening quatrain describes the students habitual taciturnity that, when startled into talk, produced not sentences of weighty profundity but leaping syllables that induced delight in her as well as her auditors.

wren,

happy,

tail

into

the

wind,

The first bird image is carefully selected and denotes a commonplace fowl that is happy not joyous, blissful or exuberant and who is blast beruffled with tail into the wind. Hardly a thing of beauty.

And when she happened to be sad, she was beyond the comforting words of a father, much less an instructoracting in loco parentis.

My

sparrow,

you

are

not

here,

A sparrow, like a wren, is the most ordinary of birdlife. Had the poet been wanting to suggest beauty and grandeur, he had a host of winged creatures at his disposal, from robins to cardinals to chickadees and kingfishers. Instead she is for him a skittery pigeon.

Clearly the poet has feelings for the girl who died so early and so tragically, The feelings will be familiar to anyone who has taught at the secondary or college level. There are students we love without a trace of lust or animal desire. Roethke is not describing an affair with a mature female of beauty as he did in I Knew a Woman. The images are nothing like l ovely in her bones . . . the way a body sways. . .she moved in circles and those circles moved. There has been no prodigious mowing here no sickle, no rake.

Instead there is deep affection and a sense of loss. The girl was a wren, a sparrow, and a pigeon. The poet possibly feels somewhat out of place at her graveside, since he is neither father nor lover. Yet he is innocently bereft.

Theodore Roethke's poem, Elegy for Jane, is the tragic tale of a man's emotional response to the death of one of his pupils. The girl, Jane, was thrown by a horse, resulting in her untimely demise. The speaker in this poem is the teacher of the dead girl, which shows the reader an immense amount about the nature of the relationship between the victim and the person telling the story. At the end of the story, we see the teacher's comments on how society views his relationship with the girl, and how he is forced to distance himself from her based on his occupation. A noted English professor recently said to his students with regard to this poem, Are we allowed to like our students? Yes. Are we allowed to be fond of our students? Yes. Are we allowed to enjoy the company of our students? Yes. But by no means are we permitted to develop a feeling of love, whatever that may be, towards our students, for we are in loco parentis, so long as you are at this school. This is the point at which Roethke is trying to illustrate, that the intitution that is formalized education prohibits the forming of close emotional ties, and makes teachers (and students) feel that they are on a different plane than the other, with neither having even the right to love the other. In Roethke's words, because the teacher is neither father or lover, he has no right to love her at all. Upon looking at the wider picture, it becomes clear what Roethke is getting at. What kind of world places restrictions on emotions based on occupation. While some teachers have been noted to do unscrupulous things with students, honest and well-meaning teachers now are paralyzed by societal conventions. This poem emphasizes the theme of innocence when describing the young girl, using repeated comparisons to animals and plants. The act of losing something so pure, so innocent, so perfect, makes the loss of the girl's life so much harder on the speaker. While it is normally prudent to question the reliability of a narrator, it is quite evident that the speaker in Elegy is speaking from the most deep and innermost part of his heart. Even the title, Elegy shows that there is a certain reverence for the dead girl, as an elegy is most often heard at a funeral, a place of utmost respect. Roethke's poem is an introspective work that shows a theme of societal constraints and of innocence. The combination of the two lead to the narrator being distraught and grieved even more so than one would expect normally. One can almost feel the moral fibre being strained and twisted by this most tragic act, and Roethke does an admirable job of evoking the reader's utmost empathy.