The Mower
Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
I'm lucky that I don't witness death every day. When I think of coroners, crime scene investigators, embalmers, I can't even begin to imagine how they can so easily ignore the fact that the organism in front of them, still and unresponsive, cold and empty, was once a living and breathing being. Perhaps it hurts more when the one in front of you is someone or something familiar.
The narrator of Philip Larkin's "The Mower" explores how the death of a hedgehog opens his eyes to how he perceives death as a whole.
An ordinary day of mowing the lawn begins for the narrator, until his lawnmower gets choked up by a hedgehog. Within the first stanza, his entire life shifts. A hedgehog, a Pagan symbol of fertility and appreciation of life, lies limp between the sharp blades of the mower. With this representation of feracity gruesomely gnarled and gnashed inside the lawnmower, Larkin writes not only of a literal death but also the death of an existence, of an idea. His act of mowing the lawn can represent his desire to mold or shape his world, while the hedgehog portrays the first casualty in his conquest.
"I had seen it before, and even fed it, once." The narrator mentions this to show that he shared a connection with this hedgehog, no matter how small or trivial it may had been. His familiarity with the small creature references to the idea that deaths are more saddening when they're of someone or something familiar rather than a stranger or foreign being. The interactions he shared with this hedgehog were juxtaposed with the animal's death; he had fed the creature with the intent of keeping it alive. This represents the uncertainty of life and the many possibilities the future holds, even if there may not be a correlation between his feeding the hedgehog and its death.
He mentions that the burial did not help, for he continued to live while the hedgehog could not. This act of burying, though showing his dedication to sending off the creature, can also show his attempt to "bury" the first casualty in his attempt to change "the world," or his lawn. However, although hiding the hedgehog beneath the ground physically removes the creature from sight, it does not fact that an innocent being had its life snatched away. The absence, as he mentioned, is everlasting and remains to torment the narrator.
Larkin's poem concludes with the idea that all beings should live in consideration of others, taking into account that time is short for all living beings. However, it's odd that the narrator mentions being "careful / Of each other," seeing as the hedgehog's death supposedly isn't pre-planned. How could the narrator have been careful unless he knew that the hedgehog had a chance of reappearing in the grass? Therefore, it could be concluded that he isn't telling to be careful of harming others but rather of trying to manipulate one's world. Because the hedgehog died by the lawnmower, the narrator's act of mowing the lawn can be seen as the cause for his death; had he not been mowing the lawn, the hedgehog may still be living. By establishing this connection, one may conclude that Larkin is arguing against the exploration of our world, supporting instead the stagnation in order to minimize the amount of casualties (whether literal or not) around you.
"Enough! Who says I have to defend myself? I'm a machine, like you. Like all of you. Blood-lust and rage are my character. Why does the lion not wisely settle down and be a horse? In any case, I too am learning, ordeal by ordeal, my indignity. It's all I have, my only weapon for smashing through these stiff coffin-walls of the world. So I dance in the moonlight, make foul jokes, or labor to shake the foundations of night with my heaped-up howls of rage. Something is bound to come of all this. I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing!"
Within the eighth chapter of John Gardner's Grendel, Grendel appears to be in the midst of a nervous breakdown. At this point, he seems to be conflicted between the Shaper and the dragon's arguments on living life.
As the dragon told him earlier, Grendel sought out his pile of gold and sat on it; he finds satisfaction out of grieving the Danes and continues to do so despite Hrothgar's misery. This shows his development from his previous belief that he no longer wanted to threaten the humans, that he wanted to "let them find some other 'brute existent'" (Gardner 73). During the war, Grendel initially seems angry with himself for his thirst of blood. He found it against his will, "mindless as wind," (Gardner 9) to feast upon the humans. His wish to become acquainted with the Danes is apparent when he storms the meadhall, crying out for mercy and peace, though the dragon argues that as long as Grendel exists, the humans will continue to unite against him.
Although he did so when he was younger, Grendel begins to acknowledge his large superiority over the animals and humans. When he was but a child, he called himself an "ugly god" (Gardner 22), saying that he created the universe with every blink he blinked. His boasts are more prevalent after the arrival of Wealtheow, and he states that Hrothgar is his own creation. He justifies his manipulation and torturing of the king by saying that he is his experiment. By this, he attempts to play God by putting himself above the Danes.
However, Grendel confesses that he is also a machine, mechanized by blind impulse and instinct just as the ram, the goat, and the humans. In addition with his language, Grendel also shares a methodical way of life with the Danes. Despite saying he was above all of instinctive behavior and has some sort of free will, he slowly begins to fall into that systematic habit of slaughter. What's interesting is that he backs this up by confessing his attacks were his only weapon for "smashing through these stiff coffin-walls of the world" (Gardner 123). By saying this, he is attempting to become his own Shaper in an effort to find a purpose in life. He rejects the purpose presented to him by the Shaper and tries to abide by his own idea which was brought upon him by the dragon, that the Danes' existence relies on his own.
Although he is trying to live by the dragon's advice, he refuses to acknowledge his idea that the world is meaningless, that "in a billion billion billion years, everything will have come and gone several times, in various forms" (Gardner 70). With the Shaper, even if it is false, Grendel is given a reason to live, whereas the dragon claims it's all for naught, that in time no one will even know he even existed.
As for me, I believe I try to live by the Shaper's words but end up being driven mad by those of the dragon. I've acknowledged that time is quickly passing by and I shouldn't waste time worrying about the inevitable end, but I can't shake the feeling that within a hundred years, nothing I've done will hold any significance. With seven billion individuals in the world, living and dying every second of every day, what difference can I really make? Even more, why does it matter that I make a difference? I feel as though so long as I enjoy the present, there's no need to squander my time fearing oblivion.
"It is impossible to say just what I mean!"
- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant... one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes."
- Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock and Sherwood Anderson's George Willard both share a fear of the future. For J. Alfred, his fear is more focused on the limited time and life he has left; for George, his fear is of maturity and "sophistication."
Throughout Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", the narrator is struggling to express his emotions; he wonders how he would go about communicating his feelings, eventually using up all his time uncommunicative. He acknowledges the amount of life that can occur in such little time: "In a minute there is time/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse" (Eliot 47-48). J. Alfred also realizes that time has past him by, that he's grown old with "a bald spot in the middle of [his] hair" (Eliot 40), representing his age and perhaps the knowledge he accumulated over his lifetime. Despite this recognition, he continues grappling with his inability to voice his emotions, fearful of the misunderstanding that he may receive in return.
This concept of understanding is also represented throughout Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. George Willard portrays the coming-of-age character of the work, to whom multiple characters attempt to teach the truths of life. Wing Biddlebaum tells George that he's destroying himself, that he "must begin to dream" (Anderson 30). In contrast, George's father tells his son to wake up, while Wash Williams informs George that he must stop dreaming and that he wishes to destroy the dreams in the reporter's head. Kate Swift tells him that "it's time to be living" (Anderson 163). This dream state could be equivalent to his lack of maturity during his childhood, in which he has yet to come in conflict with real world problems. His awakening could represent his maturation into adulthood, when he stops concerning himself with affairs with multiple women and begins focusing on his future.
J. Alfred and George both reach the point where they question every little thing they do. It begins for J. Alfred when he begins to wonder the worth of the minuscule happenings, of "the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets" (Eliot 101). He also questions future actions, as simple as eating a peach or parting his hair. His inquisitive state reveals his understanding that every small part of his life makes a difference in the long run. As George makes his departure from Winesburg, "the serious and largest aspects of his life did not come into his mind" (Anderson 247); instead, he also thinks of the little things. He reaches a point when he "takes the backward view of life" (Anderson 234) in which he evaluates how meaningless his life has been. He equates his life up to that point as a leaf blowing in the wind, resembling how weak and dispassionate he's been throughout his adolescent years. This marks his acknowledgment that he wishes to make a change in the future and become more of a "man."
