19 pages • 38 minutes read
Carolyn ForchéThe Colonel
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1981A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Poetic & Journalistic Ethics
Forché first published this prose poem in Women’s International Resource Exchange, a publication that focuses more on journalism than on literature. Despite the literary heft of the poem, it is presented in a journalistic context. The first line sets the stage for this focus, addressing the reader with “What you have heard is true” (Line 1). This phrase sets up what follows to be understood as a true story, and one told in the explicit context of “setting the facts straight.” The combination of straightforward observations, simple declarative sentences, and the use of the past tense can at times suggest a report.
The speaker remains in a purely observational role, simply recording and reporting as a hybrid poet-journalist. Midway through the poem, it seems she might be tempted to act, but her friend “said to [her] with his eyes: say / nothing” (Lines 15-16). Even at the tensest moments, the speaker remains a fly on the wall. The Colonel’s suggestion that his barbaric collection of “many human ears” (Line 17) will make a good detail for the speaker’s “poetry” (Line 23) directly confronts the speaker’s choice to remain only an observer. The critique highlights an ethical problem. As a poet/journalist, the speaker is responsible to record truthfully and as objectively (that is, detached) as possible. However, the power of her poem is somewhat dependent on the spectacle she reports, even if that spectacle is ghastly. In this way, the Colonel is correct—the ears are a central and strong image in the poem. However, rather than sacrifice her purely observational role, the speaker utilizes the techniques of poetry to turn the ears against the Colonel. In the poem’s last lines, the ears scattered “on the floor” (Line 24) are divided between those turned upwards and those turned down, “pressed to the ground” (Line 25). Ears in the former condition hear the “scrap of [the Colonel’s] voice” (Line 24), while those pressed into the ground by the Colonel’s violent outburst can hear nothing. Much like this division highlights the scope of the consequences of the Colonel’s violence, suggesting hosts of people to whom the ears belong, rendered either voiceless and either dead or deaf.
Dueling Forms of Power: Authoritarianism Versus Poetry
“The Colonel” can be read as a modulation of power dynamics. At the beginning of the poem, only two parties are present: the implied reader to whom the “you” refers (Line 1) and the speaker, who relates to the reader what “is true” (Line 1). Already, a power dynamic has been set up—and highlighted—between poet and reader. The reader is subject to the choices the poet makes, and the poet explicitly receives final say on what is true.
By the second sentence, the poem establishes a second power dynamic between the poet and the poem’s titular subject: the Colonel whose house “I [the poet] was in” (Line 1). The lines that follow highlight the power wielded by the Colonel, who is unmentioned save in pronouns that declare ownership over his “house” (Line 1), “wife” (Line 1), “daughter” (Line 2), “son” (Line 2), and all the trappings of the home. The appearance of “a pistol” makes the Colonel’s abstract power more concrete by the implied threat of violence, and the “cop show” (Line 5) suggests a military or political power enforced by organized armed officials.
Nearly every detail in the poem contributes to the text’s discussion of power, illustrating either the Colonel’s authority or the way it is enforced through violence. The “[b]roken bottles […] embedded in the walls” (Line 6), the “window […] gratings” (Line 8), and the “gold bell […] for / calling the maid” (Lines 9-10) are listed as all of a piece: examples of the Colonel’s authority and the power to enforce it. The only instance of anyone speaking in the first two-thirds of the poem consists of the Colonel’s parrot “sa[ying] hello on the terrace” (Line 14). This seemingly innocent happening is out of the Colonel’s control and, thus, results in him bursting out in a rage, telling the bird to “shut up” (Line 14). The Colonel has power over his country and his house, and, despite the surface of quiet domesticity, he cannot abide any threat to his absolute control.
Despite the poem’s depiction of the Colonel’s power, the poet retains a subtle power over the entire scene. It is the poet who determines and communicates the truth; it is the poet who has the final say on the scene depicted in the text. The implicit tension between the power of the poet and the poem’s subject reaches its climax when the Colonel remarks, “Something for your poetry, no?” (Line 23). Here, the Colonel claims ultimate power over the poem—without his actions and his violent spoils (the bag of ears), the poem could not exist. However, the poem has the last word by transforming his actions into an imagistic criticism in the form of the ears deaf to his words.
The Connection Between Class and Violence
On first glance, the poem is split by a stark juxtaposition of luxury and violence, sensory delights and evil horrors. However, the poem’s description of both reveals that it contrasts them in order to demonstrate their inherent connection. The beautiful details the poem describes—the meal of “rack of lamb, good wine” (Line 9) and “green mangos” (Line 10)—can only exist by virtue of the Colonel’s political atrocities; his violence secures his wealth. Furthermore, each of the sensory delights that constitute the poem’s lush details are tied to wealth and the use of force that underlies class distinctions. The carefree lives of the Colonel’s children, who are described only in terms of “[h]is daughter [filing] her nails [and] his son [going] / out for the night” (Lines 2-3), exist only because of the wealth that comes from the Colonel’s ruthlessness.
The dinner, so central to the poem, is perhaps most notably characterized by the “gold bell” (Line 9) calling the maid, who brings “green mangos, salt, a type of / bread” (Lines 10-11). The fact that the Colonel has a maid who serves him, just as his wife serves him, “carr[ying] a tray of coffee and sugar” (Lines 1-2), is an indisputable mark of his economic class.
Finally, the poem’s comparison of the severed ears to “dried peach halves” (Line 18) covering “the table” (Line 17) demonstrates in gory terms the direct connection between the perks of the Colonel’s aristocratic status and his inhumane practices. The ears are served up like the mangos, yet another crop brought by servants to the Colonel’s expensive table.
