"Root Cellar"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how in the poem "Root Cellar", author Theodore Roethke uses immensely visual and concrete imagery. It looks at how the reader not only experiences going down into the root cellar through the intense description, but also experiences the imagery, along with a few powerful metaphors, which gives life to the root cellar's contents and creates a sense of awareness and defiance to the reader. It analyzes how the poem creates an outstanding image of a desolate and surreal environment usually overlooked, but deserving of attention and careful consideration. It also demonstrates how the descriptive diction and musical alliterative qualities add to the affective power of the piece not only as an image but also as a thought-provoking meditation.

From the Paper:

"In line six, the focus shifts from the visual to the olfactory, focusing the readers' attention on the "congress of stinks" (6) emanating from the room. The smell is not one of the death, but life that festers, or it perhaps only half-dead, like "old bait" (7). The half-rotten stems are already "pulpy" (8)-shadows of their former robust and erect selves. Their perfume is "silo-rich" (8), like that of grain left too long after harvest. The "Leaf-mold, manure" and "lime" (9) provide contrasting images against one another-the manure is used to foster growth, but not in this environment. The leaf mold continues to spread, despite the presence of the lime, long used to quicken decay of dead bodies to hasten their passing from the memories of the living. But despite the dark and damp, and the utterly desolate conditions, "Nothing would give up life" (10). So strong is the persistence of the contents of the root cellar that "Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath" (11)."

More papers on "Root Cellar":

• Poem Review # 145463 : "Root Cellar", Life and Death"
• Term Paper # 117872 : "Root Cause Analysis"
• Essay # 1888 : "Human Root Caries"

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