A Commentary on the Geranium by Theodore Roethke Essay

Mallory Goss English HL Mrs. Riggs October 2nd 2012 Poetry Analysis The poem â€Å"The Geranium† by Theodore Roethke tells the story of a bachelor, formerly a party animal, now a lonely, aging man, through a sustained metaphor which uses the speaker’s geranium as a symbol for the disregard of his own health. The plant is never well, nor is he, due to the speaker being as inconsiderate to the geranium as he is to himself. With imagery, alliteration, and symbolism, much is learned about the speaker through a simple geranium to which he is intrinsically intertwined. We can see right from the beginning with lines such as â€Å"limp and bedraggled . . . / . . . like a sick poodle / Or a wizened aster in late September,† (2-4) that our speaker†¦show more content†¦. . on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer† (10) as well as the consequences of such irresponsible actions; he talks of being â€Å"shriveled† and â€Å"dried out†. It’s clear both the speaker and his plant have suffered from such a way of living. It also seems to reveal the careless and somewhat incompetent nature of the speaker. After all, if you can’t even take care of a plant, how can you take care of yourself? In the next stanza we get another glance into our speaker’s former life. He talks of â€Å" . . .dumb dames shrieking half the night† (16) as well as more mention of alcohol. The pieces of the speaker’s past we have received thus far can be put together to form the image of a reckless bachelor who gives no thought of tomorrow. With the current events of the poem, we can see how this lifestyle doesn’t do much for our speaker now that tomorrow is here. In this stanza we also get to hear the narrator describe himself directly for the first time, but he still ties himself to the plant, showcasing how heavily interconnected he and the geranium are. The speaker says that they are both â€Å"seedy†, which is a rather interesting play on words du e to the fact that it means sordid or shabby, or could be used in the context of plant seeds. The term acknowledges both the similarities and differences between the speaker