Literature Annotations
 |
Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert) |
| Genre | Poem |
| Keywords | Body Self-Image, Infectious Disease, Patient Experience, Suffering |
| Summary | The speaker looks around his sick room. "The tassel of a blind swings constantly." He identifies the room with "the hollow rind of a fruit," where a spider with its legs folded "lies on the dust." In fact, he is the spider. And what is there outside the window? Only a gray cave "with great spider-cloths hanging / low from the roof." The people he can see are nothing but "spiders with white faces" scuttling around the cave. "Ah, but I am ill, and it is still raining, coldly raining!" [13 lines] |
| Commentary | This short poem is a wonderful evocation of the experience of illness. The patient feels like a spider crouching mindlessly in a rotting piece of fruit. The world has turned into a dark cave with scuttling white-faced spiders everywhere. Can you imagine a better description of how a person feels during a bad bout of influenza? |
| Source | The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence |
| Publisher | Viking Penguin |
| Edition | 1971 |
| Place Published | New York |
| Annotated by | Coulehan, Jack |
| Date of Entry | 10/27/99 |
| Last Revised | 08/31/06 |