22 pages • 44 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopArrival at Santos
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Flag, Coins, Paper Money
At first the speaker of “Arrival at Santos” calls the country’s flag a “strange and brilliant rag” (Line 14), realizing they never even thought that Brazil had a flag, and then speculating they must also have “coins” (Line 17) and “paper money” (Line 18). Flags, coins, and paper money are symbols of sovereign nationality. Countries display pictures of important figures, landmarks, or insignia that an outsider may not understand. This indicates the speaker is not informed about the country they are entering, nor its history, politics, and symbols. It emphasizes the depths of their feeling of being an outsider and suggests a degree of self-absorption. The speaker never asked what the flag looks like or what it means, and they never considered this land as a fully civic entity to its people, rather than a place to go. Upon arrival, the speaker starts to recognize their view of the world as myopic and limited.
Boat, Tender, and Postage Stamps
“Arrival at Santos” is about crossing a border, literally and figuratively, and Bishop depicts these details as underwhelming. The setting is a port in Brazil, filled with imagery of travel and transportation. The speaker says “The tender is coming” (Line 13), referring to a little boat that will carry passengers from the larger ship to the land. Miss Breen appears going “backward” (Line 19) down the ladder, rather than forward with confidence. She describes ports as being necessary “like postage stamps” (Line 32). These items help people travel, but the speaker does not see them as innovations or marvels. They are simple “necessities” (Line 32) that make the experience of travel bureaucratic, backwards, and perfunctory rather than glamorous or adventurous. The speaker notes the postage stamps the tourists use slide off, “either because the glue here is very inferior / or because of the heat” (Lines 38-39). As with the flag, the speaker judges the country based on their first encounters, assuming that it is inferior based on its stamps, its port, and the view from the boat. It points to the importance of a first impression and the irony of judging a country by its perfunctory necessities, which, as they state, “[do] not matter” (Line 34).
Alcohol, Cigarettes, and Green Coffee Beans
The “green coffee beans”, (Line 22) grown in tropical climates like Brazil, would be familiar to American travelers in their roasted, dark-brown state, but not in their green state. The green coffee beans defamiliarize something familiar, suggesting something raw and organic. They represent a popular consumer item in a stage of commerce and export, awaiting international shipping on “twenty-six freighters” (Line 21) instead of processed, packaged, and displayed attractively in a market. The image peels back the veneer of the speaker’s processed and modernized culture to reveal the raw, unvarnished reality of the natural world, and the industrial world of ports and cargo. The freighters themselves contrast the presumably more comfortable mode of ocean transport on which the speaker and fellow passengers eat breakfast. It suggests that the travelers are enveloped in something unprepared, as they are also unprepared.
By contrast, the speaker hopes that they will be able to keep their bourbon and cigarettes, which are more processed comforts they are used to consuming. They are also narcotics that subdue the nervous system, while coffee, in contrast, wakes people up. This is another way of suggesting that the speaker is resisting the opportunity to grow, change, and become more alive by entering a new location, relying instead on the mind-numbing products of familiarity.
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By Elizabeth Bishop
