16 pages • 32 minutes read
Susan MitchellThe Dead
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Folklore and Mythology
Rivers have always been associated with the dead in cultures all across the world. In Western culture, the most famous example of this is the River Styx from Greek mythology: The Styx is a boundary, separating the world of the living from Hades, or the domain of the dead. In the poem, the dead “com[ing] down to the river to drink” (Line 1) could thus be trying to draw closer to the living to catch a glimpse of those they have left behind. In Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, the gods swear on the Styx as a binding agreement. This gives the act of drinking from the river new resonance; in doing so, the dead are making a promise to the living or to themselves, though the exact nature of this promise is left to the reader’s interpretation.
A range of other world mythological systems and religions have also explored the relationship between the dead and bodies of water. In Egyptian folklore, the river Nile was considered a place of both beginnings and endings: It was associated with creation as well as the journey the dead took to the afterlife. Indian mythology has the Vaitarani, a river which leads to the afterlife. In Japan the river with a similar function is called the Sanzu-no-Kawa, which means River of Three Crossings. Likely, these crossings refer to various stages of life, with death being the final crossing into the other world.
The multicultural image of a river fulfilling the function of a psychopomp suggests universality that a body of water carries souls between the world of the living and the afterlife, a connection that mirrors the beginning of life, when a child is born out of the water of the womb.
Literary Context: The Theme of Death in Poetry
Death has long been a widespread theme in poetry, which often grapples with the end of life and what comes next. This comes from the mixed feelings that accompany thoughts of one’s own inevitable passing, and the grief of loss and mourning.
Although most classical poets and many contemporary poets have at least one poem exploring this idea in their repertoire, and so Mitchell’s “The Dead” is part of a tradition spanning millennia, the poem is particularly connected to works that portray the afterlife as a state of solidarity and solace; or, they shift that optimism and hope to the living by portraying a message of embracing life in all its facets. Emily Dickinson’s 1890 poem “Because I could not stop for Death” explores death as a personified force external to the living; Countee Cullen’s poem “Two Thoughts of Death” (1926) is a lens through which the poet explores their feelings on the unknown; and Langston Hughes’s poem “Dear Lovely Death” (1931) examines death not as an antagonist, but as a force of renewal and change. Even though death is so often something to be feared, these poems take a more hopeful and optimistic view. Similarly, “The Dead” shows the afterlife as a process where the dead “unburden themselves” (Line 2). While it’s not an entirely positive poem, it does show that death can be a place of catharsis and renewal.
Mitchell’s “The Dead” in turn inspired Billy Collins’s poem of the same name, from his collection Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001). Both poems use the motif of a river to illustrate the divide between the dead and the living, and examine the living through the perspective of those who have passed over. Collins also explored this idea further in his poems “The Afterlife” and “Writing in the Afterlife.” The ongoing literary tradition of writing about death from multiple angles shows an innate human need to understand the unknown, and to see peace and hope within it.
