Student Question
What is your analysis of Rosemary Dobson's poem, “The Three Fates”?
Quick answer:
“The Three Fates” by Rosemary Dobson describes a drowning man who does not quite drown but whose story unfolds backwards from the moment of drowning, with an implication that he is fated to repeat this sequence eternally. Although it does not refer to a specific myth, the poem recalls various episodes from Greek literature in which fate has a leading role.
"The Three Fates" by Rosemary Dobson is a fifteen-line poem consisting of five tercets. There is no rhyme scheme, though there are occasional assonances, and no regular meter. Generally, the first line of each tercet is the longest, and the last line is the shortest. In stanzas one and four, the last line is a dactyl followed by a spondee, traditional line-ending for Greek and Latin epic poems.
The poem describes a man drowning, placing the events leading up to this moment in reverse chronological order. It begins as he is about to drown, at which point "he invoked the three sisters." These are the three Fates of the title, the Greek goddesses with the power of life and death over mortals. The reader would naturally assume that the drowning man must be pleading for his life, but it seems that he is actually pleading to be allowed to die.
Instead of drowning, the man bobs "up like a cork," putting on his clothes and returning home, where he "suffered the enormous agonies of passion." He writes poems, watches a girl who grows younger out in the garden, then begins the sequence over again.
Dobson's poem recalls several Greek myths without exactly paralleling any. Tithonus, the mortal who loved the goddess of the dawn, asked for the blessing of eternal life and found it to be a curse. Sisyphus was sentenced to push a rock up a hill for eternity. This poem combines elements of both myths, but the man's story remains mysterious and disturbing, as the Fates are supposed to be.
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