Procrastinating doing English homework

I have to write an essay about the poem "The Drowned Children" by Louise Gluck for my American Literature class. It's due in about 23 hours, and I still haven't started it yet, but it only has to be one page long. Double spaced. So it's one of those ones that I could put off until tomorrow morning, and still get an A on it... but I'd rather not. I've got other homework due tomorrow that I'm doing before class in the morning. And yet, by posting an entry here, I'm continuing to procrastinate and not get it done. And I want Subway. Just saying.

There's been so many times lately that I've wanted to update here, and even typed up an entry... but then after reading it over, I decide that it doesn't feel like me. It doesn't feel like something I would write, so I change my mind and don't. So I figured I would just post on here about that poem. You know, my interpretation of it. That way I'm killing two birds with one stone - finally updating on here, and working towards finally getting that dang essay written.

The poem, as I've said already, is called "The Drowned Children." And I mean, really? Could our teacher have picked a poem with a more depressing title? The only title more depressing than that one is one called "The Dead Baby" that we had to read earlier in the semester. All the poems on the list this time were all about death. But every poem that we go over in class, he tells us it's about sex. And he comes up with this insane explanation about how the poem is actually about sex. So I could probably just come up with some ridiculous interpretation of the poem that has actually nothing to do with the poem, saying that it's actually about sex, and he'd give me an A. But I'm not going to do that. Because I think that's really stupid. And seriously? Not everything revolves around sex.

Upon first reading, I was sure the poem was about the death of children, death by drowning. And really, what a horrible way to go. Even looking the poem up on the internet and reading other people's understanding of it, I was still stuck on death. But I didn't want the poem to be about children drowning. When I think children, I think Nathan and Candis and Trisha and Cameron. And I don't want to think about them dying. That's too awful of a thought to even think about.

But if not death, what else could the poem be about? Multiple readings of the poem lead me to the same conclusion - the poem is about death. There's no other explanation I can think of. So maybe, I thought, the poem didn't necessarily have to be about the death of children by drowning, or even the death of children at all. Maybe the poem could be about the death/loss of childhood innocence as children grow into adulthood. That would fit the death theme, I think anyway. I hope.

There's a line in the poem about the children's scarves "floating behind them as they sink / until at last they are quiet." So, going by the loss of childhood innocence theme, then the scarves could represent the children's last ties to childhood. The scarves are what is keeping the children charmingly childish (points for alliteration?), but as they grow up, the scarves are being stretched and pulled to their limit "until at last they (the children or the "scarves") are quiet." The final quietness, if the "they" is the children, could be the children with knowledge, in adulthood with the complete loss of innocence. But if the dreaded "they" is taken to mean the scarves, then the final quietness could be taken to mean that the growing-up children no longer have any ties to their former childhood innocence.

So that's the first stanza of the poem I'd rather not be reading. The middle stanza starts out with "death must come to them differently." The poem is written in the point of view of an adult watching the children "drown" (or grow up, depending on how you're reading it). The adult telling the story must not remember at what point knowledge was gained and innocence lost, and since he does not understand, perhaps that is why the "death" of innocence seems different to the adult. The stanza ending with the poet/storyteller saying that so much of a child's life "is dreamed, the lamp, / the good white cloth that covered the table, / their bodies." And, continuing with the loss of innocence theme, saying that much of a child's life is dreamed is the same as say it's imagined. Have you ever spent time with a kid? Children have the most amazing, phenomenal imaginations. They can build the most amazing cities in their minds. They can be superheros and anything else they want to be, while still staying the same person. The loss of innocence could also symbolize the loss of imagination, dreaming, and reaching for your dreams. Children reach for the stars, because they can. Adults, on the other hand, tend to realize their reality and live in it.

The last stanza talks about people calling the children's names, asking, begging to know, where they have gone to. And that, to me with my interpretation of the poem, could be the child's slower-to-grow-up friends searching for the person they once knew. The line "Come home, come home, lost / in the waters," is written in italics, so I took that to be a different person speaking. The child who has lost his (or her) innocence, his (or her) friends want them to come back. But the ending word "permanent." is the saddest word in the poem. The child can never return to a state before gaining knowledge, a state before the loss of innocence. The child's transition into an adult is, as the poem says, "permanent."