Brahmanhas passed beyond the level of time and
space. It has no use for past memories or future
predictions.
The dead of Mitchell’s poem still exist on the
level of time and space. Like living people on earth,
they are bound up in memories, in the form of
stories and photographs, and eagerly tell the future
of their friends and relatives who are still alive.
These are dead people who do not fully accept
that they are dead, but cling on to the qualities
and activities of the living. Conversely, it is a
frequent experience of the newly bereaved, as
Mitchell recalls, to hunt out signs and memories
of their loved ones’ lives on earth.
The description of the living people’s futures
as cracked and yellow connotes decay and age.
Thus even the time that has not yet come is given
the characteristics of the time that is past. This is
another sense in which the world of time and space
is the world of death. It is not just the dead who
exist in death’s realm: Itis the living, too. Just as
the dead cross over into the world of the living,
invading attics and reading palms, so the living are
already in the world of the dead.
The first and last lines of the poem contain
references to drinking: The first may refer to the
waters of the Lethe, which could help them forget
their earthly lives, while the second refers to their
thirst for alcohol during their lives. The suggestion
of addiction or desire for intoxication evoked by
the reference to alcohol may symbolize an addic-
tion to earthly experiences.
In the poem, drinking operates as a meta-
phor for forgetting. It is often said that people
drink in order to forget. While the dead were
alive, they may have drunk alcohol in order to
forget, and now that they are dead, they also
drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget.
Yet at the same time, they tell stories and show
photographs to enable them to remember. This
suggests the cyclical nature of addiction, where
addicts take steps to fight the destructive behav-
ior but the stress of doing so quickly drives them
back to feeding their addiction.
This cyclical process reflects the cyclical nature
of the birth-death-rebirthprocess of reincarnation.
In Buddhism and Hinduism the cycle is referred to
as the Wheel of Karma. Karma is the effect of a
person’s actions, which are seen as bringing upon
that person the inevitable results, good or bad, in
this life or in a reincarnation.
The dead of Mitchell’s poem are trapped on
this Wheel of Karma, neither fully in this world
nor the next. As in Buddhism and Hinduism, there
is no moral judgment attached to this state. It
simply is what it is until it is something else. Indeed,
the play and interplay of these processes keeps the
created world in motion. Seen in this light, the
poem becomes an exploration of attachment in
life and death.
Source:Claire Robinson, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Dead,’’
inPoetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.Sources
Alighieri, Dante,Purgatorio, translated and edited by
Robin Kirkpatrick, Penguin Classics, 2007.
Becker, Robin, Review ofErotikon, in ‘‘The Poetics of
Engagement,’’ American Poetry Review, November–
December 2001, pp. 11, 13, 14.
Daly, Catherine, ‘‘Miltons: Susan Mitchell’sErotikonand
Carol Frost’sLove and Scorn: New and Selected Poems,’’ in
Valparaiso Poetry Review, Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall–Winter 2002–
2003, http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/dalyreviewmiltons.html
(accessed August 29, 2009).
‘‘Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece,’’ in
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 2000, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dbag/
hd_dbag.htm (accessed August 24, 2009).
Eberhart, Richard, Review ofThe Water Inside the Water,
HarperPerennial, reprint, 1994, back cover.
Graves, Robert,The Greek Myths, Vol. 1, Penguin Books,
1955, reprint, 1982, pp. 120–21.
Kunitz, Stanley, Review ofThe Water Inside the Water,
HarperPerennial, 1994, back cover.
McMullen, Cary, ‘‘Despite ‘New Atheists,’ 82% in U.S.
Think There’s an Afterlife,’’The Ledger(Lakeland, Florida),
March 23, 2008, p. A1, http://www.theledger.com/article/
20080323/NEWS/803230424/0/FRONTPAGE (accessed
August 29, 2009).
Mitchell, Susan, ‘‘The Dead,’’ inThe Water Inside the Water,
HarperPerennial, 1994, p. 20.
———, personal email communication with the author,
August 31, 2009.
Neville, Tam Lin, Review ofRapture,inAmerican Poetry
Review, Vol. 23, No. 1, January–February 1994, pp. 41–45.
Review ofRapture,inPublishers Weekly, Vol. 239, No. 12,
March 2, 1992, p. 62.
The Principal Upanisads, translated and edited by S. Rad-
hakrishnan, George Allen & Unwin, 1953, reprint, 1978,
p. 634.
‘‘U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation:
Diverse and Dynamic,’’ The Pew Forum on Religion and
Public Life, February 2008, p. 20, http://religions.pewforum.
org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf (accessed
August 29, 2009).The Dead