Poem Analysis,“Not Waving but Drowning”
“Not Waving but Drowning” is a breath-taking piece of work by Stevie Smith, who describes the emotional predicament of a speaker whose actual trials and tribulations go unnoticed by all parties around her. The poem commences with the speaker pointing out that there is a dead man who, in fact, is not dead. He is basically not dead because his story has a lot of lessons/teachings to offer to the world. The man met his demise at the hands of abandonment and apathy. This is true because we see the man struggling out in the fast-moving, deep ocean waters, and no one realizes. He is desperately attempting to get someone’s attention, but the witnesses mistake him to be waving rather than drowning. “And not waving but drowning.”
In the second stanza, the narrator angrily criticizes the emotionless reactions of the onlookers and all the acquaintances he met in his life. They saw him, tried to recall something about his life, and pronounced him dead without any further ceremony. “Poor chap he always loved larking, and now he is dead.” On the surface, this piece only presents a picture of a drowning man whose pleas for aid go unanswered. As we further understand the poem, it illustrates the dilemma of a man who succumbs to his death while the people around him do not notice the myriads of problems he faced.
Some of the major themes that can be extracted from this poem include loneliness, death, and misunderstanding. The poem portrays the society satirically by stating that a person is usually not valued when alive. However, as soon as one kicks the bucket, many emerge with fake grief.
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