Kenneth Rexroth's "Proust's Madeleine" analyzed
...that the narrator has been hard at work at his/her desk because “idly” means “to pass time without working or while avoiding work.” The narrator may just be taking a short break as the girl hands the object to him/her. The narrator catches the coin and continues with a coin trick in order to amuse the young girl. Rexroth uses this line to show the reader the loving relationship between the daughter and her parent. It obviously means a lot to the narrator to take the time, even when tired, to spend with his/her cherished one. The tone of the poem begins to change completely in the fourteenth line. “Suddenly everything slips aside,” the narrator says, as if to signal the end of an innocent and wholesome moment with a young girl. The usage of the word “slip” is a good metaphor to describe how reality suddenly disappears before the narrator’s eyes. The moment spent with his/her daughter “slips” aside as an image of his/her father takes over. It is not necessarily an unpleasant image at first, as the narrator imagines his/her father “doing the very same thing” the narrator is doing. The reader is then drawn into a moment in time that has long past, when the narrator was but a child. The father is whistling “Beautiful Dreamer,” a 19th century hymn written by Stephen Foster. It is a fairly famous folksong that has been composed into different variations countless times since its inception, but the narrator associates it with the memory of his/her father reeking of whiskey and cigars, as revealed in line nineteen. Rexroth uses the word “richly” to describe the father’s breath in a paradoxical manner. Something that is “richly” can be said to have great wealth or value, yet a father’s breath smelling of cigars and whiskey is quite repugnant, and in using this paradox, Rexroth forces the reader to comprehend just how strong this memory is as the narrator remembers every last vile detail with perfect clarity. The tone of the poem continues to spiral down to tragic as the narrator sees the father coming home so drunk, he bumps into the chairs in their home. The narrator explains how the father comes home and bumps into chairs in the dark in lines 21 to 23, so the reader can surmise that it is very late at night when the father arrives. Though an exact location of where the narrator lives is not given, the reader knows that the father was at the Elk’s Club in Elkhart, a small town in northern Indiana. A reader could almost assume that the Elk’s Club is some sort of casino or gentlemen’s club instead of a charitable organization! This image of the father coming home blindly drunk gives the reader an undeniable feeling of recklessness and abandon. The implication that he drove home from Elkhart, Indiana further solidifies his carelessness and imprudence, especially as a father. The final tone of the poem begins on line 23, when the narrator sees the father dying of cirrhosis, a chronic liver disease. The narrator uses very direct language when describing the condition his/her father is suffering through. The narrator does not sugarcoat or lessen his/her father’s condition, but states bluntly how he is dying from cirrhosis, as well as stomach ulcers and pneumonia. All of which, are ailments that put the victim in an extreme amount of pain and suffering. The reader can picture many different images now, none of which are very pleasant. A man lying on his deathbed with dark ulcers over his face is just one of the many images that come to mind. Just the mere mention of diseases like cirrhosis and pneumonia bring forth emotions of fear and despair, but seeing a father afflicted with such casualties is almost unimaginable. At this point, the tone of the poem undergoes a complete U-turn from the first thirteen lines when the narrator was playing with his/her baby daughter and her poker chip. It has gone from an innocent gesture with a loved one, to a distant memory of a man that can better be described as a late night drunkard gambler than a father. The narrator remembers the father’s words on his deathbed in the last three lines of the poem, yet he adds another layer of mystery at the conclusion of the poem. The father claims that it was not the ulcers, or the pneumonia, or even the cirrhosis he was dying of. Instead, it was from the “crooked cards and straight whiskey, slow horses and fast women.” This explanation gives the reader a profound sense of wonder and bewilderment as to how exactly, the father lived his life. “Crooked cards” is a metaphor for cheating in a game of cards, most commonly poker. One wonders if the father was referring to himself as having the crooked cards, or possibly the opposing players were playing with unfair hands. Straight whiskey is whiskey with no colorings or flavors added. The reader already knows the father was a heavy whiskey drinker, so much so that his breath reeked of it when he whistled. “Slow horses” refers to the horses that lose at the horse races, and it is a term heard by gamblers that bet on the wrong horses. It has already been implied that the father was a heavy gambler, now there is more evidence to verify it. Finally, “fast women” is a metaphor for promiscuous and lewd women, and the reader is left w...