Theodore Roethke’s poem Elegy for Jane shows the pain death brings to a person affiliated with the deceased, but is not quite a loved one. In Elegy for Jane this put in the perspective of a teacher who has recently lost a student. Roethke shows this pain through the use of youthful imagery to create depth for Jane’s character and the pain the narrator shows for her loss.
The central argument Roethke makes is that it is hard for a teacher to express pain for the death of a student shown in the last couplet of the poem. As the morning narrator is over her grave, he speaks, “I, with no rights in this matter, Neither father nor lover.” The narrator feels strange mourning for his student because he believes that should be left to the girls family and friends, even though he feels he should. To express feelings for a student who has died is hard as Mary Singer explains:
“The words of Theodore Roethke's poem sound my frustration as a grieving teacher. Darcy's death, like Jane's in his poem, had been a sudden, random tragedy? Accident, not illness. Roethke searches for definition but is able to de scribe his relationship only in terms of what he is not: neither father nor lover. How could I have conveyed my relationship to Darcy, if I had written to her family? I was "neither father nor lover," certainly, and could be neither. I was bereft of Darcy and bereft also of words to describe accurately, sensitively, our teacher-student relationship,” (When a Student Dies, pg. 46).
The teacher forms a bond with his student in the poem, as Singer explains, that is neither a romantic nor a parental attachment. The teacher is bereft of seeing the student he put so much care and time into grow. That is shown in the first stanza when he describes his students with youthful characteristics. He describes her hair as tendrils, and her smile as the side of a pickerel (a young pike). Jane will never blossom into an educated woman. She will forever be young as stanza two describes her –a singing little sprite that affects the nature around her. The teacher has trouble justifying the sorrow for his student because he is paid for her benefit instead of having emotional stake in her home life.
The central argument Roethke makes is that it is hard for a teacher to express pain for the death of a student shown in the last couplet of the poem. As the morning narrator is over her grave, he speaks, “I, with no rights in this matter, Neither father nor lover.” The narrator feels strange mourning for his student because he believes that should be left to the girls family and friends, even though he feels he should. To express feelings for a student who has died is hard as Mary Singer explains:
“The words of Theodore Roethke's poem sound my frustration as a grieving teacher. Darcy's death, like Jane's in his poem, had been a sudden, random tragedy? Accident, not illness. Roethke searches for definition but is able to de scribe his relationship only in terms of what he is not: neither father nor lover. How could I have conveyed my relationship to Darcy, if I had written to her family? I was "neither father nor lover," certainly, and could be neither. I was bereft of Darcy and bereft also of words to describe accurately, sensitively, our teacher-student relationship,” (When a Student Dies, pg. 46).
The teacher forms a bond with his student in the poem, as Singer explains, that is neither a romantic nor a parental attachment. The teacher is bereft of seeing the student he put so much care and time into grow. That is shown in the first stanza when he describes his students with youthful characteristics. He describes her hair as tendrils, and her smile as the side of a pickerel (a young pike). Jane will never blossom into an educated woman. She will forever be young as stanza two describes her –a singing little sprite that affects the nature around her. The teacher has trouble justifying the sorrow for his student because he is paid for her benefit instead of having emotional stake in her home life.