The Message
The Message - context Summary
Published in 1946
Published in 1946 in Prévert's Paroles, the poem appears as a spare free-verse litany. It strings together everyday actions—opening doors, petting a cat, reading a letter—by an unnamed someone, then shifts to urgent movement and ends with a hospital where someone died. Its publication in Paroles places it in the immediate postwar moment and among poems attentive to ordinary lives and sudden loss. The cumulative, fragmentary listing and anonymity foreground absence and consequence rather than a single narrator or event.
Read Complete AnalysesThe door that someone opened The door that someone closed The chair on which someone sat down The cat that someone petted The fruit that someone bit into The letter that someone read The chair that someone tipped over The door that someone opened The road where someone is still running The woods that someone crossed running The river in which someone jumped The hospital where someone died.
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