Hello, How Are You?
Hello, How Are You? - meaning Summary
Fear of Suburban Sameness
The poem contrasts a speaker’s dread of becoming like the passive suburban residents who are already "dead" in spirit. It depicts domestic sameness—television, small lawns, closing doors—as a slow social and emotional death: living yet inert, isolated and fearful. Images of quiet streets, muted laughter, and figures behind windows or fences suggest confinement and numbness. The poem warns against surrendering to complacency and the erosion of vitality in ordinary life.
Read Complete AnalysesThis fear of being what they are: dead. At least they are not out on the street, they are careful to stay indoors, those pasty mad who sit alone before their tv sets, their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter. Their ideal neighborhood of parked cars of little green lawns of little homes the little doors that open and close as their relatives visit throughout the holidays the doors closing behind the dying who die so slowly behind the dead who are still alive in your quiet average neighborhood of winding streets of agony of confusion of horror of fear of ignorance. A dog standing behind a fence. a man silent at the window.
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