To Elsie

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1945

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Transportation

The poem mentions methods of transportation twice, near the beginning and right at the end. This supports the undercurrent of movement and progression that the poem carries as it explores a changing era. The fourth stanza reads: “devil-may-care men who have taken / to railroading / out of sheer lust of adventure” (Lines 10-12), a reference to the young men who come to work on the railroads. There is, however, a double meaning to the verb “railroading”: it also means to convict someone hastily, or to make a rushed, unconsidered decision. This alludes to the way young people in this poem hurry through life, always chasing the next sensation.

Later, transportation appears as the very last word that closes the poem: “no one to drive the car” (Line 66). This is used as a metaphor for the breakneck speed at which life passes by, as well as a way to juxtapose the image of the railroad. Compared to trains, cars represent a whole new world of possibility and would still have been quite new at the time in which the poem was written. The car as a symbol and landing word for the poem encompasses the feeling of moving towards the future and a parallel loss of control.

Jewelry

Jewelry is mentioned in the 16th stanza: “addressed to cheap / jewelry” (Lines 46-47), and it’s alluded to in the sixth stanza: “to be tricked out that night / with gauds” (Lines 16-17), or gaudy affects. While jewelry is normally expected to be a luxury, covetable item, in the context of this poem it is expressed with distaste and disdain. The lines, “which have no / peasant traditions to give them / character” (Lines 18-20), suggest an emptiness to the ornamentation rather than elegance or sentimental value. Rather than being a reminder of the past, jewelry here is a symbol of an empty, meaningless future.

These images feed into the larger themes of consumerism, corruption, and social class. The jewelry presented here is an artificial attempt to bridge class divides; however, it only has the opposite effect, marking its wearers as desperate and tasteless. The speaker observes this cyclical prison in which people like the title character have found themselves, and jewelry becomes a symbol of the futility of their dreams.

Fields of Goldenrod

Towards the end of the poem, the narrative shifts towards images of nature and the contrast of the natural world against modern consumerism. The 19th stanza reads: “while the imagination strains / after deer / going by fields of goldenrod” (Lines 55-57). The image is discordant when viewed against previous motifs of a degraded, suffocated America. Here the speaker presents an ideal much like heaven, which remains eternally out of reach for the people trying to survive each day.

In the next line, the speaker says the ideal “seems to destroy us” (Line 60)—using a first-person pronoun to include themself with the other victims of the American dream. This suggests that having an image of the potential in the natural world just out of reach is more painful than not being aware of it at all. The “golden” image alludes to the glamor of the jewelry alluded to previously; here, however, the fields represent a healthier and more pure form of riches. The fields within the speaker’s imagination symbolize everything America once had the potential to become but has since lost.