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Alden Nowlan’s “Aunt Jane” is an interesting poem about the sad realities of old age. It is a short poem but even those few lines bring out the predicament of living a vegetable-like life which is not only hard for the person living it but also for the family members. Through this poem, Nowlan seems to argue that death is better than the life of an invalid.
The very first line of the poem, “Aunt Jane, of whom I dreamed the nights it thundered” (line 1), seeks to associate Aunt Jane with scary things. It is obvious from this line that Aunt Jane was not a pleasant-looking woman but someone whose face was scary enough to cause a young child sleepless nights. This ghostly image of Aunt Jane is further reinforced in the second line which describes her as someone who “was dead at ninety, buried at a hundred” (line 2). Nowlan intentionally presents this paradox in the second line because most people are buried around the time that they die. The idea of a dead body being kept for a decade is so gross that it can elicit fear and disgust and most readers. In these lines, Nowlan deliberately tries to scare his readers in an attempt to get their attention.
Once the poet has the attention of his readers, he proceeds to explain this scary image that he has painted. The next two lines not only reflect the mental demise of Aunt Jane but also the way her family members reacted to this loss of mental abilities. Obviously, an old aunt who had lost her mental abilities was an embarrassment to the family and had to be kept hidden upstairs. Also, Aunt Jane lived a simple life devoting her days to prayer when she was not eating or sleeping. Besides, her family also did not seem to invest too much time in her well-being, having all but given her up for dead. The fact that her food mainly consisted of “porridge” is a further indication that the family wanted to interact as little as possible with old Aunt Jane.
But despite having this obvious revulsion to the old and dying Aunt, the family still seemed to feel some kind of attachment to the old woman. The fact that she was kept at home and not sent to some old age home shows that despite being uncomfortable with her presence, the family felt a certain sense of duty to the old woman. Also, the children in the house were asked to routinely interact with her so that she may not feel lonely. Yet, perhaps because of her scary appearance, the old-time the children really interacted with Aunt Jane was when adults took them to pray with her just before they went to bed. These lines make it clear that the poet ad no real wish to visit Aunt Jane but went only because it was required by the adults of the house. The situation also reflects the unfortunate situation of Aunt Jane. For most old people the children of the house are the main source of joy. But obviously, for Aunt Jane, in her old age, even the joy of interacting with children to pass her time was not an option. In the last two lines, Nowlan alludes to this fact when he prays to God to let his body die before his soul does. It reflects on the fact that even though Aunt Jane was alive in body, her soul was dead and this was the worst way for any person to spend the last few years of his life.
Aunt Jane is a very sensitive poem and anybody who has had an old or sick relative can easily identify with the predicament of Aunt Jane. Even though nobody wants to die, but when we are faced with the prospect of living a vegetable-like life, most of us would prefer to die, just as the poet prays to God to let his body die before his soul.
Work Cited
Nowlan, Alden. “Aunt Jane”. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama. 11th ed. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson Longman. Print.
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