Alyssa Wallingford
September 26, 2022
English 206
Quotation: “Come,’ said my mother,/’Come and say goodbye/to your little cousin Arthur.’/I was lifted up and given/one lily of the valley/to put in Arthur’s hand./Arthur’s coffin was/a little frosted cake,/and the red-eyed loon eyed it/from his white, frozen lake.”(Farrar et al. 83).
Comment: I find it odd that they take so much time to describe the loon and its red eyes earlier in the poem, and then switch to what we see here, where they describe the corpse of a seemingly small boy and the view of this corpse through the eyes of a small child. I would assume that this is a small child based on needing to be lifted up to place the flower in her dead cousin’s hand. Additionally, I am a bit confused as to why the loon is eyeing the boy’s coffin, and also why the coffin is being compared to a frosted cake. I also wonder if the Lily of the valley is a flower that has some kind of symbolism that can be applied to the context of this poem in a way that makes sense. I would also like to bring attention to the calm tone the mother is described to be using with her word choice, as if this child is simply leaving a play date with Arthur, or a family get-together, rather than laying a flower in their dead cousin’s hand.
Question: Why are they making a comparison between a small child and a stuffed loon? Are they making a comparison or drawing a connection? What is the white frozen lake?
