Poetry for Students Vol. 10

80 Poetry for Students

“a folk tale of unquestioned natural vitality.” Phelps

further distinguished between readers with literary

pretensions (who dismissed Service’s sentimental-

ity, metronomic rhythms, simplicity, and limited

range) and those who used these same criteria to

praise his verse for being memorable, recitable, and

sympathetic to ordinary people. More recent crit-

ics have attempted to isolate the folk-poetry fea-

tures of his work and to analyze his structural pat-

terns. Edward Hirsch, for example, reads the Yukon

ballads as a closed structure opposing Dionysian

and Apollonian (body and mind) elements in hu-

man behavior. Service represented tensions be-

tween nature and culture, and he claimed to espouse

nature before all. The continuing appeal of the po-

ems about Sam McGee and Dan McGrew, how-

ever, rests not in any intellectual paradigm they em-

ploy but in the sly humor and metrical regularity

that initially made them so readily adaptable to par-

lor performance.

Criticism.

Bill Wiles

Wiles teaches and writes in the shadow of Ver-

mont’s Green Mountains. In this essay, he explores

the idea of cold and the meaning of keeping

promises.

“The Cremation of Sam McGee” presents an

interesting look into the life of prospectors. Ex-

tracting gold from the Klondike and Yukon Rivers

in less than favorable weather conditions offered

challenges to the “sourdoughs” who came to seek

their fortunes, and provided material for writers like

Robert W. Service and Jack London.

The term “moil” in the opening lines carries

with it the meaning of digging under wet, dirty con-

ditions. That is an unpleasant task in any climate,

but set that action in the Yukon and the significance

becomes more apparent. The very fact that days

and nights are much different than they are in the

lower 48 creates an atmosphere of disorientation.

Couple that with a landscape covered in snow

where many landmarks can be obliterated with a

mere shift of the wind, not to mention a full-blown

blizzard, and the search for gold becomes more a

tale of survival than adventure.

There is no mention in this poem of Cap and

Sam’s particular search for treasure. Instead, the

poem focuses its attention on surviving the cold.

For Cap, that means to keep moving. Throughout

the poem, Cap is active, moving across the ice and

snow. He appears to have no particular destination,

but no particular place he can use for shelter or

refuge either. When Cap does stop for the night, he

wraps himself tight in his robes and buries himself

in the snow. There is no specific mention, but the

reader could assume at least one of the dogs would

share the snow cave with Cap, their bodies pro-

viding the heat.

Whether Sam uses this method of keeping

warm is not clear. He does “whimper,” though, and

says that he’d “sooner live in hell” than in the

Yukon. His chief complaint is that he is “chilled

clean through to the bone.” It is interesting that Sam

does not appear to be afraid of dying; he is fearful,

however, of being cold for eternity. Thus, he re-

quests to be cremated.

From the finding of Sam’s corpse in stanza 6 to

Cap’s wandering just after stuffing Sam into the fire,

the poem does not mention the cold. The previous

six stanzas presented such a palpable presence of the

cold that it remains with the reader even though there

are no further references to it until stanza 12. There,

the cold is brought in as a contrast to the hot sweat

Cap is experiencing, an emotional and physical re-

action to having built the “cre-ma-tor-uem” and

putting the body of his friend in it.

At the word “sizzle,” in stanza 12, the thaw of

the poem begins. The defrosting continues and in-

creases when Cap mutters, “I’ll just take a peep in-

side / I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked.”

By the time Cap opens the door to reveal Sam sit-

ting in the middle of the furnace, it should be no

surprise to the reader. The path to warmth has been

clearly marked. Sam’s remark that it’s the first time

he has been warm should resonate with the reader

as well. All the Arctic cold of the beginning of the

poem has given way to humor and the warmth of

Sam’s personality.

Some might say this poem is about salvation,

but that argument would be difficult to make. In-

stead, it appears this poem deals more with the

power of friendship and loyalty, and the meaning

The Cremation of Sam McGee

At the word “sizzle,”

in stanza 12, the thaw of

the poem begins.”