Incommunicado
Incommunicado - meaning Summary
Misread Signs Between Beings
Plath’s poem depicts a tense, wordless encounter with a groundhog that refuses reciprocal affection, its defensive gestures resisting the speaker’s attempt at communion. The speaker contrasts this stubborn silence with folkloric expectations of mutual understanding in Märchen, and with mythic clarity—the falcon speaking to Canacee—to mourn a loss of intelligible signs. The poem explores alienation, failed communication, and the realization that gestures and tongues can lose shared meaning.
Read Complete AnalysesThe groundhog on the mountain did not run But fatly scuttled into the splayed fern And faced me, back to a ledge of dirt, to rattle Her sallow rodent teeth like castanets Against my leaning down, would not exchange For that wary clatter sound or gesture Of love : claws braced, at bay, my currency not hers. Such meetings never occur in marchen Where love-met groundhogs love one in return, Where straight talk is the rule, whether warm or hostile, Which no gruff animal misinterprets. From what grace am I fallen. Tongues are strange, Signs say nothing. The falcon who spoke clear To Canacee cries gibberish to coarsened ears.
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