Sunday, February 26, 2012
"We Are Seven"
This poem, “We Are Seven,” is a discussion between an adult man and a young girl about life and death. The young girl is incessant about being one of seven siblings, even though she is the only one who lives at home with her mother and two of her siblings have died. The man is skeptical of the girl because he does not think that she can accept what death is because she is so young. While it can be suggested that the young girl does not realize her siblings are dead, she clearly understands that they are physically no longer a part of her life because she visits the graves often. At the end, the reader is left with the girl’s voice stating that she is one of seven and the man is struck because he recognizes, arguably, that the young girl is more intuitive about death than he originally thought. While the girl has lost two of her siblings to death, she refuses to acknowledge they are no longer part of her family. She accepts their deaths and leads a life of happiness, always remembering their memory.
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It is a very adroit observation that you've made and one, I believe, that the man in the poem makes along with us readers as the poem progresses. Indeed, he initially perceives of death in solely physical terms and takes the girl's insistence that her two deceased siblings are still among her family as a naive refusal to accept the inevitable outcome of death. However, we come to understand, as does the man, that the young girl actually fosters a more advanced conception of death than even he has. She understands that it exceeds the physical and that one's state of belonging in a family does not necessitate earthly ties.
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