For the Union Dead

A detailed Summary of For the Union Dead


Robert Lowell presents his depiction of the future of America in his poem "For the Union Dead". In this poem, Lowell uses imagery as his basis for description and foretells of the oncoming decay of our American ideals. The imagery Lowell uses makes this poem more vivid and tangible, illuminating the present state of the nation, Lowell's own past, American history, and the corruption of the future. Lowell creates the picture of a path that American is on; this path leads to the eventual destruction of the beliefs that founded this nation.

The poem opens with a description of the forlorn aquarium standing "in a Sahara of snow"(line 2). The desolate and abandoned aquarium represents Lowell's belief in the loss of American ideals. Once his nose "crawled like a snail on the glass"(line 5) of a fish tank. This image causes childhood memories to surface that evoke joy and happiness. I


n contrast to this calming childhood memory of pressing up against the glass and viewing the compliant fish, Lowell then presents the image of being "pressed against the new barbed and galvanized fence"(line 12) and viewing "yellow dinosaur steamshovels"(line 14) as they "gouge their underworld garage"(line 16). This is the disintegration of what Lowell holds sacred.

Lowell gives the reader a glimpse of the corrupt future that was spawned out of World War Two and its post war commercialism. The image of the Mosler safe, amazingly enduring an atomic blast, "The Rock of Ages"(line 57), imparts Lowell's message of America's apathy, amorality, and complete absorption into commercialism. All that matters to Americans, according to Lowell, is commerce; hence the commercial's exploiting the horror of the atomic blast without remorse. According to Lowell, another part of the corrupt futu

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Approximate Word count = 600
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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