Not+Waving+but+Drowning

I had to make a post about this poem. Even though it had such a sad idea behind it, it was incredibly clever. The concept that this man is so... alone. No one seems to pay attention to him. The only time they actually see him is when he is "waving" at them. He is crying for help and pleading, but the people just stare at him and wave back thinking, "oh, he must be happy." I have to say that the most cynical part of this poem is "Poor chap, he always loved larking/And now he's dead." This just made my heart sink. These people have spent all this time ignoring him, and now that he's dead, oh well, doesn't matter. And I have to wonder, all those other times he was "larking" was he truly larking? Or was he calling out for help at those times too? Br. Tom told us that the reason the last stanza is indented is because it is the man's last cry for help. Stevie Smith makes this stanza stand out because she wants us to see his final pleading. But I also like to think that this stanza is all indented to symoblize how alone this man is. Just as this man is all alone trying to get people's attention, this stanza is all alone, trying to get people's attention. 1205378947

I agree that this poem was extremely clever, but I don't think it was as a depressing as you make it out to be. I had to read this poem during class, and the first thing I noticed about the poem was how funny it was. The poem initially came off as depressing and about death, but the context that they were put in gave the poem a dark kind of humor that I really liked. The poem did have a serious message--the guy was begging people to help him, to no avail--but the analogy that was used just kinda tickled me and gave me a funny mental image of a man frantically waving in the ocean for help with all of his friends on shore cheerfully waving back nonchalantly. It is a dark, twisted kind of humor, but I still found this to be more an ironic, funny poem than a dark, desperate remembrance. 1205379160

I can't say I thought the poem had much humor in it. Well, the dead man doesn't find his story to be very funny. Those he knew seem to have taken it lightly, but that's only because they misunderstood him his whole life. I have something to add to the reason for the indent of the last stanza. We talked in class today that the last stanza contradicts the first two. The others in the poem misread the man. They merely thought the water was "too cold for him." But the man interjects with a "no no no," throwing it off balance. It would be logical to start a new paragraph at that point anyway. One side of the story is told in the first two stanzas, and the man reveals the truth in the last: no one took him seriously throughout his life. His signals for help were misinterpreted. But the poor man didn't have the time to let this truth out. It killed him first. 1205381157

What struck me about this poem was not only the last stanza, but the lines, "It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said." So can we assume that this man was a god man? A man with a very strong heart? I belive so. I think the fact that everyone missed his death, and the fact that they still do not understand it afterwards is made complete by the last two lines, which proabably give the most insight into the poem. "I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning." This poor man felt helpless and misunderstood his entire life. He just stated that he thought his entire life lead up to his drowing, it was a spiral of downward events. It's sad that he looks at his life this way, that all of his efforts went to waste. This man through Stevie Smith's poem get his chance after death to tell his story. To teach us that we shouldn't always assume that we know what another person is going through; it may be their life, whether actual or just emotional turmoil one day at a time, at stake. It's not ours to take and assume what we will. 1205404514

I think that you are missing something vital to the understanding of this poem and that is people are paying attention to him, that is why they are watching from the shore thinking that he is waving and not drowning. The thing to remeber is that while they are paying attention to him they are misinterpreting what he is saying and that is the cruel irony of the poem. If no one was paying attention to him then there would have been no one there to misinterpret his thrashing arms as waving. This is the cruelest of irony's because there were people there they acknowledged his existance but not enough so that he could be saved but just enough to get a shallow interpretation and then go on his marry way. In some way he was ignored and not paid attention to but the fact that we have people thinking that he was waving instead of drowning and the fact that people commented on his death afterwards shows that there was some form of contact. There just wasn't enough and the indented last staza shows the last effort of a desparate man trying to get enough attention to be saved. user:DGr-c

I could kind of see the humor until I thought about the actual implications of it. It's not someone who was actually drowning, but people we spend their whole life doing things that are signs of them drowning, but everyone thinks that they are waving and just smile and wave back. When I thought about it this way it definatly started to seem really depressing. Dsu, I think that the reason it was funny is the way that you read it, which made my day, but otherwise it is pretty sad. 1205446971

When I first heard this poem, it sounded so forceful. The dying man was using his last minutes to condemn the people that mistook him for a man waving instead of dying. One of the more prominent things that confused me was how the dying man repeats the line "I was much too far out all my life..." At first I thought that, yes, he was away from the people and in trouble, what could they do about it other than try to help him a bit. But after a while, it seemed much more long-term, much more painful for the man. Almost going along with the theme from Vanya about lost life, wasted life taken from him by someone else's hands. Although in this case, the dying man is completely helpless. I also wondered if "much too far out" meant something other than distance. Far out from the society? Far out from the normalcy of the people watching him drown, causing him to drown? Any thoughts? 1205450205

I liked what you said about the normalcy of the people watching him. I never really thought about that line that way. We can see it as the man was so alone because everyone else was so different. He was always left far out of society, perhaps no one accepted him. People watched him from afar and thought, "Oh, he seems like a nice guy. Should we stop and say hello? Nah..." He was not worth their time. If this man was too far out from society, perhaps he wanted to be brought back in to the "normal." Perhaps he wanted to be saved not only from his loneliness but from his shunned state. I am not saying that everyone shunned the man, obviously they noticed him if they saw him "waving", but no one seemed to want to save him. No one cared to see that he was ok. Was this man different? Is that why no one came close to him? 1205454645

I read this poem in class. I was assigned to figure out how to present it in our poetry jam. my group split it up like a conversation and it really helped get the meaning across. The poem is crazy ironic. I mean the first two stanzas are about the man literally drowning, like in the sea. In the third, the man contradicts what the observers thought about him. He says that he had been drowning throughout his life, not just in the water. It was a clever metaphor and i liked it :) 1205461838

I'm sorry. But I thought of another post for this poem. I wanted to focus on the title and how, as Br. Tom said in class, it is one of the greatest titles in history, at least i think. It is humorous, yet absolutely perfect for this kind of melancholy poem. When you are on the shore and you look out into the water and you see someone waving so you wave back, but really they are waving at you for help because they are drowning. While you are smiling and thinking they are having fun, they are actually drowning and thinking about how much of a moron you are. It can be a misconception, just like the misconception the observers of the man that drowned made. 1205462166

We read this poem in class and as Molly and I were discussing it, we talked about the struggle the man must have went through in his lifetime. There was the idea of how it was entirely the fault of the people on the "shore" because they didn't realize that he wasn't waving but that he was actually drowning, but at the same time, the very last line of the poem clearly says that he was "much too far out all his life" which we took to mean that he partially blames himself. If he was too far out, then he knew that the people couldn't really tell if he was waving or drowning. Maybe he was antisocial, depressed, or any other type of illness that he decided to remove himself enough that people couldn't tell if he was just waving and being friendly or actually drowning and dieing. 1205465827

 When reading this poem, I reflected on the meaning behind the symbolism of waving and drowning. I think that often we distance ourselves so much from the people around us. We close ourselves off from the rest of the world. This is why no one hears the dead man crying. He hasn't let anyone get close enough to him. The line that says "It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way" really struck me. To me this line is talking about people who just give up on life. They have never let anyone get close to them so they don't feel that they can go on. They are so distanced from others that no one can see their pain and even if they did they are too far away to get help and support. For the most part no one even notices that they are "not waving but drowning." 1205467149