17 pages • 34 minutes read
Mark DotyAt the Gym
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Sweat Stain
The “salt-stain spot” (Line 1) that occasions “At the Gym” carries a heavy symbolic load. As a sweat stain, it stands as a conventional symbol for the effort and exertion that the weightlifters demonstrate in their exercise. By the end of the poem, the sweat stain becomes the “halo” (Line 33), denoting the holiness of the poem’s weightlifting community.
The sweat stain’s role in the poem is one of a synecdoche for the gym and the weightlifting community as a whole. A synecdoche is a literary device that substitutes the whole of something with one of its parts. In this case, the sweat stain is a product of the weightlifting community’s exercises and the ritual use of the bench, and it comes to contain and represent all of those things within the poem. The speaker makes these connections most significantly when he calls the stain “collectively, / [as a] sign of where we’ve been” (Lines 10-11). This quote suggests, too, that the stain stands for the larger lives of those members of the community “where [they’ve] been,” even outside of their time at the gym.
The sweat stain also resonates with the poem’s larger celebration of life, particularly at the end of the work, when the speaker calls it “some halo / the living made together” (Line 33-34).
The Shroud
The shroud appears in “At the Gym” wearing a few different guises. The poem’s references to the “shroud-stain” (Line 12) and “the mark / of our presence onto the cloth” (Lines 31-32) are clear references to the Shroud of Turin, or the cloth believed to have covered Christ during his burial. Though the speaker is not always explicit about what he references within the gym using these terms, it is possible that they are alternate names for the sweat stain.
If the references to the shroud also refer to the sweat stain, then it is also possible that Doty flips the idea of the shroud as a burial object. Instead of using the shroud to represent one individual’s death, Doty depicts his holy image as what “the living made together” (Line 34). The “presence” (Line 32) of living people who struggle to become stronger remains on the cloth, not the remains of a person long dead. This inversion does not completely eliminate the shroud’s conventional meaning, but it undermines it the same way that the weightlifters undermine the “frailty” (Line 19) of their own bodies through exercise.
Power and Beauty
Power and beauty are both central to the weightlifters’ collective identity. The chant “Power over beauty, / power over power!” (Lines 26-27) appears as a sort of mantra among the weightlifters, epitomizing their relationship with these concepts. The weightlifters prize power over beauty, as seen in their having “something more / tender, beneath [their] vanity” (Lines 28-29). They prize power over power, as demonstrated by their constant effort to have “more reps, / more weight” (Lines 8-9).
The phrase “Power over beauty” also suggests the weightlifters’ aim to create desire in others, as explored in more detail in the themes section of this guide. The weightlifters want to use their willpower to “become objects / of desire” (Lines 30-31), and they do that by putting power first and committing to their exercise to perfect their physiques.
