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Not Waving but Drowning- Stevie Smith

Thesis Statement

“Not Waving but Drowning, for instance, takes its tone from the mordant, possibly morbid, joke of the title poem”.

Introduction

The tone of “Not Waving but Drowning” is a very sad one, the author looking back on his life repenting and feeling sorry for himself when he was the one who did it to himself. In the beginning of “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” the poems setting is a ball turret on the bottom of a World War II Bomber representing a mother's womb. The entire poem to me has a very grim, eerie tone, as if the author was referring the act of abortion to the death of a ball turret gunner, an innocent and unknowing death. The speaker in the poem is the ball turret gunner, who represents an aborted fetus. The arrow will tilt the ball tower, as the fruit of your womb is bent materi.Navodchika "Six miles from earth" when he was "relieved of his dream of life." This could mean that the baby is six months old when his life taken away. In the fourth line the word "peak" refers to anti-aircraft missiles and "nightmare fighters" refers to the enemy artillery artilleristov.Zenitnaya me symbolizes the act of abortion, and the nightmare fighters representing physicians who perform operation. the last line shows that if the shooter is dead, his body should be washed off the ball turret with a steam pipe. If abortion is done, the hose is not used.

To me it is very obviously the author is against abortion. He wants to convince his readers to be pro-life. His poem is very graphic and emotionally disturbing. He uses this to affect his readers on a deep level and to try and get under their skin. Even someone who believes in abortion cannot ignore the horridness of that is represented through the poem. Both of these poems deal with death on a very deep and touching leveling. But share to completely different meanings.

The first poems death was self serving brought on by himself, but very depressing and pathetic, not viewing life as a fragile gift as it is. He took everything for granted and ended up paying for it with his life. But the Death in second poem was so innocent and unexpected basically begging for sympathy and compassion. Both poems show us how life really is fragile and can be lost at any moment and must be guarded as something sacred and blessed. Many of Smith's poems are about childhood, especially about the capacity of children to see through adult pretenses, and in the Thurberesque sketches with which she illustrated her verse she often appears as a little girl wearing an enormous floppy hair ribbon and a rather wistful expression. In her life, too, as Jack Barbera and William McBrien point out in their useful and entertaining biography, Smith was something of a Peter Pan, not so much failing to grow up (her dealings with publishers show she ...