Death And Thoughtlessness In Poetry

Although the poems "Not Waving But Drowning" by Stevie Smith and "The Fly" by William Blake were written in two very different time periods, it is still possible to find similarities between them. Williams Blake's poem is seen through the eyes of someone who thoughtlessly kills a fly and then tries to justify it, while Stevie Smith's poem is about a man who is in trouble but whom his friends won't listen to. The meaning behind both poems is death and the thoughtlessness and ignorance that sometimes surrounds it.

In William Blake's "The Fly", first published in 1789, the narrator compares himself to a fly. In the first verse the narrator kills a fly by brushing it thoughtlessly with his hand. In the next verse he asks: "Am I not/a fly like thee?/or art not thou/a man like me". Here he is wondering if there really is any difference between himself and the fly. In the last verse he says that if this is true, then it would not matter if he was alive or dead. His reason for saying this may be that he regrets killing the fly and he tries to justify the murder by saying he is really just like a fly. And since flies don't mind dying, then it did not matter that he killed one.

Stevie Smiths' poem "Not Waving But Drowning" from 1957 is about unheard cries for help. In this poem we read about a man who has drowned. While dying he is moaning that he was really much further out than what everyone thought, but no one is listening to him. He is trying to tell them that he has really been like this for a very long time. The second stanza in the poem begins like this: "Poor chap, he always loved larking." Here we see that the others look upon him as a goofy man who was always fooling around. Next they say the water must have been too cold for him, and that this must be the reason he died. The dead man then moans "Oh, no no no, it was too cold always". He tries to tell them that when they thought he was playing around, he was actually calling for help. This is also the meaning behind the title which is repeated a couple of times throughout the poem. When his acquaintances thought he was waving and having a good time, he was actually drowning.

If we compare the two poems we can see that they have a lot of similarities. The narrator in Blake's poem represents people who are witnessing others having a bad time and are either

...