Karen M. Clark
Melanie Jordan
ENGL 1102
Essay #1-Draft
Everything is Illuminated: An Analysis of Light in Native Guard
Light is collectively thought to be symbolic of gaining wisdom. In an epiphany, one can
imagine a light bulb turning on above his head. In dream symbolism, in art, or as a collective
psychological symbol around the globe which stems from deep in our unconscious, light is
thought to illuminate and show something greater has been gained. Throughout Natasha
Trethewey’s poems in Native Guard, we see the repeated symbol of light. In some situations,
however, light isn’t always fully shed but rather casts a shadow, reflecting through a window or
bending through a vase. From beginning to end of the book, we are able to watch the creative
use of light come full circle: from blinded, unaware consciousness to a fully illuminated, wiser
soul.
Tretheway’s introduction poem into the book is “Theories of Time and Space,” which
follows along “one-/by-one mile markers ticking off another minute…” which is taken as
synonymous with a time line of life. “Follow this/to its natural conclusion-dead end” (5-8). We
can take the same idea and apply it to the train ride of the first poem of section I, “The
Southern Crescent.” The train is a time line of the speaker’s mother’s life. Leaving on that train,
barely sixteen, “She is leaving behind/the dirt roads of Mississippi…” (5-6) Sadly, she fails to
discover what she was looking for on her journey. The second train ride proves to be another
miserable failure, just as her first trip was. The speaker and her mother derail and never make it
to their destination. Both trips were made in hopes of visiting the men in their lives that had left
them behind in the red dust. The poem is incredibly telling in many ways, and reveals so much
to come in the poems to follow. On that last train ride, the speaker…
[watches]
each small town pass before [her] window
until light goes, and the reflection
of [her] mothers face appears clearer now
as evening comes on, dark and certain. (32-36).
Not only does the poem effectively illuminate the foreshadowing of hardships or death of her
mother, but it also similarly sheds light on the speakers own personal experience. As a strange
twist, light - rather than coming on, goes out. In darkness, she captures her mother in
reflection, both literally and metaphorically. It isn’t simply her mother caught in reflection, but
herself as well. Often times one has to go down the dark road to find the light in the end, and
after reading the rest of the book one will find Trethewey finds the light in time, but not
without deep reflection and the learned ability to do so through growth.
In the poem that immediately follows “The Southern Crescent,” Trethewey introduces a
speaker who, “[watched] light bend through the glass” in “Childish vanity” (10/13). In “Genus
Narcissus,” she writes, “I must have seen in [the daffodils] some measure of myself-the slender
stems, each blossom a head lifted up toward praise, or bowed to feet its reflection”(13-16). She
watched the light refracting through the vase. Recall again, light as a symbol for illumination
and wisdom. Then light refracting through a vase is an altered view of that light. Looking to this
bended light, this altered view, rather than light itself, wisdom; she describes herself just as the
daffodil, bowing to meet her own reflection. She is “taken with [her] self” and obstructed from
truth and wisdom. The voice in the poem leads the reader to believe she is writing this while
reflecting as an adult, light not shed on her vanity and self-absorbed nature until later life.
In the poem, “Blond,” the use of light is portrayed to the reader in a similar obstructing
and blinding manner yet evokes a different theme. The speaker examines a photo of her
childhood and ponders on the memory, feelings and thoughts it conjures. The speaker awoke
on Christmas to a blond wig, which she describes as, “a shining halo,” a pink sequined tutu and
a blond ballerina doll (2-3). When a person says “shining”, one immediately imagines a bright
light. Bright lights are considered blinding to some or perhaps merely twinkling and distracting
to others. A study of dream symbols (which according to the authors of “Man and His Symbols,”
should hold similar symbolism in art and poetry) strongly portray the belief that bright light is
an indication of a need to move toward a higher level of understanding and awareness in hopes
to deepen one’s insights (www.dreammoods.com). To understand why the symbol of bright
light indicates this, again relate it to being blinded or distracted, and being distracted – an
obstruction of a persons view. On that Christmas, the speaker was too young and innocent to
capture the full magnitude of the situation compared with her life. She was a child of mixed
heritage, black and white, receiving a blond wig. The adult speaker explains, “I didn’t know to
ask, nor that it mattered, if there’d been a brown version” (12-13). She also states that this was
“years before I’d understand it as primer for a Mississippi childhood” (15-16). In the moment,
the child was distracted by her innocent nature, being playful and un-thoughtful. It took
growing up through a difficult childhood under what had to be thick, dark skin, to look back in a
different light. She goes on to ponder while observing the photo, “the child that chance, the
long odds, might have brought” (24-25). Additionally, she imagines the many different ways her
genetics could have mingled. Her life could have been completely different, perhaps easier with
lighter skin tone. A child is not able to differentiate skin color between people, because seeing
one person different from another is a learned behavior. Unfortunately for our speaker, people
of the south are too unforgiving of a person that is different. As the adult, looking onto the
photo, she has illuminated this complex issue of skin color that was not felt in her youth
thankfully from being blinded by her innocence. From reading other poems of the book, the
underlying theme is revealed to the reader. When the twinkling, distracting light fades, she at
first suffers due to her skin color, but overcomes her difference in time.
Trethewey repeatedly brings up the negative connotations of being black or mixed in
the South throughout “Native Guard.” Names like “mulatto,” “nigger-lover,” and “half-breed,”
saturate the text, and more specifically the last section of the book. Trethewey gives us
“Southern Gothic” as a follow up to “Blond,” sticking to the topic of skin color and childhood
memories. “I have lain down into 1970, into the bed/my parents will share for only a few more
years.”(1-2) All the while, “Oil lamps flicker/ around us – our shadows, dark glyphs on the wall/
bigger and stranger than we are” (18-20). Dark or darkness in symbolism is relayed with failure,
ignorance and evil. If one feels safe in the dark, it suggests that he or she likes not knowing
about certain things.* All of these symbols for darkness are expressed in the undertones of the
poem. Our speaker returns in a dream to “[huddling] on the island of bed,” (15) wanting to feel
safe in the dark with her parents. It is here she can pretend and be ignorant of what she knows
will ultimately come. The lamp signifies reassurance (family comfort) as well as her
overwhelming emotional issues,* and casts a shadow, revealing the hidden dark side: the
ignorant reaction to her parent’s miscegenation. Shadows are thought to be the rejected and
hidden. The speaker, as well as her parents, have buried the ignorant and evil words of others
deep within (hiding them), only to allow it to eat them from deep inside. This shadow (which in
our speakers case is the perception of her family) casted in the dark is described as a glyph that
is bigger and stranger than they are. As a glyph, this shadow, is a huge sign screaming to our
speaker, “evil”, as that is what they are to their community. Darkness also suggests failure, and
for our speaker’s case, it is failure of her family to hold on to one another. They allowed the
ignorance of others to pull them apart. When our speaker was a child and first experienced this
particular memory, it was warm being there with her family. Reflecting, dreaming and reliving
the situation again, the subtle symbolic undertones gathered from the imagery of light, emerge.
Trethewey opens her last poem of the book with an epigraph by E.O. Wilson. “Homo
sapiens is the only species to suffer psychological exile.” Wilson’s quote taken with the motif of
light throughout “Native Guard,” fully intertwines the two ideas together. From that first train
ride of looking into the dark and finding reflection, to watching light bend rather than light
itself, being blinded and distracted, and recalling a shadow on a wall - our speakers have
illuminated their past experience. Moving away from a self-absorbed nature, highlighting skin
color in the south, and the negative experience that comes with being mixed, our speaker who
may or may not be Trethewey’s voice, has gone through their psychological exile and is ready to
return home.
I returned to a stand of pines,
bone-thin phalanx flanking the roadside, tangle
of understory- a dialectic of dark
and light – and magnolias blossoming
like afterthought: each flower
a surrender, white flags draped
among the branches. (1-8)
Our speaker in the poem “South,” has found the art to reasoning with the dark and light forces
at play in her life. This dark and light is described as the understory to Mississippi, which has
been the home of our speakers throughout the book. Because of this, one can take dark and
light to be the understory of the book itself, and not only Mississippi. The readers of the book
can note that the perceiving voice has been an adult all throughout, and often times reflecting
back upon an old memory. Though speaking often on the Mississippi experience itself, the voice
is distant – in their psychological exile. More matured, each speaker has brought light to the
past with a wisdom not sought at the time. “I return/ to Mississippi, state that made a crime/ of
me – mulatto, half-breed – native/ in my native land, this place they’ll bury me.” (31-34) Our
final speaker, very wise, is now ready to accept what they have inherited: their mind, their skin,
and most of all their home.
Works Cited
Trethewey, Natasha. Native Guard. New York, New York. 1997.