The Lost Son (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Theodore Roethke
- First Published: 1948
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Despair, Hope, Mental illness, Fathers, Depression, mental, Loneliness, Life, biological, Animals, Winter, Plants
“The Lost Son” has five parts—“The Flight,” “The Pit,” “The Gibber,” “The Return,” and “’It Was Beginning Winter’”—each of which describes a stage in the grief of the poetic persona (in this case, surely Roethke himself). The poet works through the various stages of his feelings of sorrow and desolation to reach a conclusion which is not really a relief of his feelings but a hope for future solace.
Part 1, “The Flight,” begins with a reference to a cemetery (“Woodlawn”), and it is from this place and the fact of death that the flight...
[The entire page is 869 words long]
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