15 pages • 30 minutes read
Mary OliverMessenger
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Life
In “Messenger,” Oliver utilizes the concepts of work and the natural world surrounding her to explore the relationship between life and death. She demonstrates how immersing herself in that triad can ultimately bring her into true presence, awe, and wonder of life itself—in whatever form it may take. The theme of nature grounds the poem, but the theme of life carries it forward. Oliver explores not only the life around her, but her own existence in relation to and as an integral part of the natural world. There is a much action and movement in the opening stanza. “The sunflowers” and “the hummingbird” (Line 2) are characterized as “seekers” (Line 3). The bread being made in the home is not done, but instead is described mid-action as the “yeast” is “quickening” (Line 4). Even “the clam,” who is not necessarily moving, is given the momentum of its life-in-action as Oliver describes it as “deep in the speckled sand” (Line 5). Everything is seen in perpetuity, moving individually but collectively through life.
Mortality
The pervasive foreboding of death looms in the second stanza as the speaker pulls inward and away from the natural imagery of the first stanza. The focus shifts to what is decaying rather than thriving. The speaker asks, “Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect?” (Lines 6-7) The speaker reveals her internal conflicts in seeming opposition to the scene in the first stanza. Her body and her clothes are not a reflection of vitality and life, but instead old and evident of a life in decline: She describes herself as “no longer young” (Line 7). But once these thoughts are pronounced, the speaker shifts the focus back to her “work” of “loving the world” (Line 1) by “keep[ing] her mind on what matters” (Line 8). This is where the real work is revealed: The speaker’s work, while seemingly simple is not at all easy. Instead, the real work is revealed in the speaker’s struggle to honor her work while amid personal physiological decay: to reconcile the opposing forces of life and death and to revel in the richness of life in the natural world without becoming mired in her own concerns over her waning appearance and life-force.
Nature
The entirety of “Messenger” is rife with natural imagery. In the third stanza, the speaker describes birds and flowers—“[t]he phoebe, the delphinium” (Line 12)—and “the sheep in the pasture, and the pasture” (Line 13), all of which offer joy simply for being alive. In this way, the speaker animates the scene before her with her own emotion of delight, regardless of her aging. The love of life of the aforementioned pastoral scene is not exclusively the speaker’s joy nor exclusively the joy of the nature in front of the speaker, but instead merges as a shared experience. In the fourth and final stanza, the speaker continues to build upon this emotion and has “gratitude” (Line 15) for her life.
Where most of the poem has characterized nature as vibrant and alive and the speaker as aging, the end of the poem switches that perception. Instead, the speaker is grateful and full of energy, “giv[ing] shouts of joy” (Line 17) while the clam is “sleepy” and “dug-up” (Line 18) and awfully close to the end of its life. In this moment, the speaker embodies the existential paradox of life itself—such is her “work” (Line 1). She is infinite and finite at the same time as she perfects her “work” (Line 1) of focusing on the moment at hand, creating space for the finality of death to exist together with “gratitude” (Line 15) for what simply is. It is in the midst of this perpetual spiral of life, death, and the endless occupation of living in joy for the present that the speaker is able to marvel and declare to the natural world around her that this is “how it is / that we live forever” (Lines 19-20). Here, the speaker is perfectly present. Her “work” (Line 1) allows her to experience a space of such presence and wonder that she feels that intangible state of rapture akin to a religious experience, and can reconcile the inevitability of death as the impetus for humans to live life to its fullest.
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By Mary Oliver
