Confronting Death in Richard Wilburs The Pardon Essay -- Wilbur The P

Confronting end in Richard Wilburs The Pardon Death is the issue at the heart of Richard Wilburs song The Pardon. This is apparent from the opening line, My dog lay dead five long time without a grave. What is not immediately apparent, however, is that this is not simply a meter about a young boys sadness over the loss of his dog. What Wilbur discusses in this piece is much more profound, cutting through the superficialities of death and confronting fears and doubts that altogether of us experience at different points in our lives. This is a poem about atonement, about facing the mistakes of the past and confronting them directly. More specifically, it is about reconciling ourselves with death and everything that lifes deepest tragedies entail. The adult narrator of the poem is haunted by his past, unavailing to cope with feelings and emotions that he had as a youth. He even seems to oblige attempted to repress a portion of his life. However, as a dissolving agent of a chill ingly realistic dream, he is at last forced to sheath what he thought was buried for good. The realization that comes because of this, the realization that death is not something to run from, is the true meaning of the poem and the crux of what Wilbur is trying to opine to the ref. The Pardon can be divided into three distinct parts. The starting sub-section is made up of stanzas one and two, which detail a tragic lawsuit that occurred in the life of the narrator when he was ten years white-haired the death of his dog. It is in these first eight lines that the narrator tries to give the reader an understanding of what he felt when this happened. He uses very descriptive haggle and phrases, providing vivid imagery of the various sights, smells, and sounds that he experienced. H... ...ightful look into death and the fears and doubts that it induces deep down all of us. The narrator of the poem is a man who has never been adapted to confront death, beginning with the loss o f his dog at the age of ten. He has chosen to avoid it his entire life, rather than attempting to understand it. It is ultimately as an adult that a vivid dream causes him to finally face his fears he sees his dog rising out of its grave and begins to ask it for forgiveness. The dog in the dream can be seen as a representation of his trepidation. erst he is able to confront it and ask for its pardon, he can finally begin to cope with the idea of death. Works Cited Jarrell, Randall. Fifty Years of American Poetry. The Third Book of Criticism. NY Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. Wilbur, Richard. Mayflies. Mayflies New Poems and Translations. NY Harcourt Brace, 2000.