American Literature

Many poems have been written about motherhood. Some of them trigger nostalgic sentiments about childhood, while others simply lead to realizations about a mothers sacrifice. In Randall Jarrells poem titled, The Lost Children, the author employs a complex narrative style and theme in order to provide a different view of motherhood. Composed of ten uneven stanzas, the poems narrative angle, timeline and theme make it uniquely different from other poems of the same subject.

Assuming a female persona, Jarrell presents a unique narrative angle. First, he employs a first-person point of view using I and me which helps establish the personas authority in the subject. This is evident in the first stanza where she narrates her experience as a mother of two girls, one fair, one darkone alive, one dead (1-2). From the way she narrates her experience, she projects confidence and control of her situation but as the poem continues, this confidence weakens and is eventually lost. To effect this change, Jarrell shifts the angle of narration from the first to the second-person point of view. In the second stanza, she addresses an unseen addressee using the pronoun you, although it can be argued that she is only talking to herself. Nevertheless, this angle of narration suggests the idea that as the child grows up, the mother loses control of the situation. The shift in narrative angle lessens the personas grasp of the subject, thus she says, It is strange to carry inside you someone elses body (8-9). These lines project her difficulty to comprehend her experience and to control her fate.

The timeline that Jarrell employs also makes the poem creatively interesting. First, he opens the poem with the present, then reminisces the past in the second stanza, and finally provides a great leap into the future in the following stanzas. The progressive phase that Jarrell uses makes the readers long to read on. As they read the poem, they develop some curiosity to find out how the girl transforms, and how the mother feels about the changes her daughter undertakes. The use of the varying timeline thus allows readers to realize that along with the daughters transformation is her mothers growing sentimentality about the loss of her child.

Moreover, the theme of the poem makes it a lot different from other poems of motherhood. Poems discussing motherhood usually project a mothers love and sacrifice in raising her kids, but this poem shares the isolation that the mother feels as she feels the distance between her and her daughters. Jarrell applies juxtaposition and irony in presenting the mothers view of her experience. She compares the dark one to the fair one, and realizes the irony that the dark one Isnt dead but has everlasting life (59-60). This means that the dead daughters memories live on despite her absence. Meanwhile, the fair one who lives is lost. The line, I keep wondering where she is (56) connotes that although the daughter exists, her mother cannot feel her presence for the daughter has lost the child in her.

Jarrells creative use of the narrative angle, timeline and theme to suggest his message is what makes the poem worthy of literary merit. Also, his attempt to portray a female persona despite his male gender adds to the overall effect of the poem. In sum, despite the sentimental mood of the persona, Jarrell manages to control the poems tone with the use of varying narrative angle and timeline. Likewise, using isolation as the theme, he succeeds in presenting the weariness of a mother, and the universal experience of human longing for the past.