Review of Fieldwork in Secret

Review of Fieldwork in Secret

            The poem ‘Fieldwork in Secret’ tells the story of a young boy observing both the lives of his parents and those of their workers. The narrator says this story in first person highlighting that these are the lived experiences of himself and those around him. The story is a presentation of a typical industrial age family. The family land is not only used to house the family, but it is also used to host an industry. Through symbolism, the narrator uses the poem to tells the story of his family.

Although presented in a light tone, the choice of words and the qualities given the noise coming from the industrial processes identify the distaste the narrator has for the noise pollution resulting as a result of this. The sound can be taken to symbolize the nature of communication in the narrator’s family. The author likens the voices of the industrial workers to fenceposts. This highlights how loudly they have to speak to be heard. To some degree, it can be argued that the fence described here symbolizes communication within the narrator’s family. In contrast, the fence posts express the few instances, and they can communicate.

The family of the narrator is not happy. Although the outward appearance looks neat and the father only stopped telling the mother that he loved her under her instruction (line, 22 and 23), the departures the narrator speaks of that lasted days or weeks (line 17 and 18), could be the times the mother and the father had separated forcing the mother to leave with the narrator for days or weeks till the father came for them. The narrator further identifies that there were times that the father also left. The departures by the father were more frequent than those by the mother, and that’s why the narrator remarks, “I guess he liked the act of it, Leaving.”  This could explain why the mother hated it when the father said he loved her. The father could have been unfaithful, and maybe this is the primary cause of the dysfunction being experienced.

The mood of the poem is solemn. The very nature of his family saddens the narrator. The narrator’s memories of his father are of him “mumbling along to the radio,” yet when at home, he neither sang nor spoke. The narrator contrasts the nature of his father to that of his mother, and this is probably done as a satire to early 19^th-century parenting. This could further emphasize the solemn mood of the poem by identifying that the father was unhappy in his own home since it was easy to sing driving but never at home. While the mother was outspoken and maybe, to some extent, disrespectful to the father, the father was distant and dictatorial. The tone with which the mother describes her husband shows that she has no affection for him. Not only is she offended by him saying he loves her, but she also describes his dreams where he professes his love for her as in a tone that carries distaste.

In this poem, the fence could symbolize various things. As identified above, one of these is family dysfunction. While the reasons for exiting their relationship are many, the narrator identifies that the father always came back. When he (the narrator) and the mother left, the father would always go for them. The relationship between the father and the mother survives not for is beauty, but rather for “the plain act of keeping.”