Finale
Finale - meaning Summary
Grief Managed Through a Gesture
Finale describes a widow’s confrontation with an absurd, painful relic: her husband’s teeth returned after his funeral. She washes and cradles them, finds them grotesquely smiling and unrecognizable, and ultimately hurls them out the door into the scrub. The throwing acts as a grim, decisive ritual that shuts down her tears. The poem ends with her falling into a numb sleep, accepting his death and her part in it.
Read Complete AnalysesThe cruellest thing they did was to send home his teeth from the hospital. What could she do with those, arriving as they did days after the funeral? Wrapped them in one of his clean handkerchiefs she'd laundered and taken down. All she could do was cradle them in her hands; they looked so strange, alone – utterly jawless in a constant smile not in the least like his. She could cry no more. At midnight she took heart and aim and threw them out the kitchen door. It rocketed out, that finally-parted smile, into the gully? the scrub? the neighbour's land? And she went back and fell into stupid sleep, knowing him dead at least, and by her hand.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.