EGL 204-4 March 5, 2004
Contemplating “not waving but
drowning”
At first glance Stevie Smith’s poem “Not Waving But Drowning” (687) seems to offer information from more than one voice; the voice of the dead man and the voices of his friends. Upon closer inspection, however, I see it as the voice only of the dead man himself. In addition, it is my belief that the death was not accidental but suicidal.
When entering the poem for the first time, a reader might assume that the speaker of the first two lines, “Nobody heard him, the dead man,/But still he lay moaning:” is someone other than the deceased. However, the switch to the first person for the concluding lines of that stanza, “I was much further out than you thought/And not waving but drowning.” are clearly spoken in the first person. The fact that there is no period but rather a colon between the two expressions indicates that they are part of the same thought, spoken by the same person. Although people rarely refer to themselves in the third person unless they are being sarcastic, I imagine that the dead speak of themselves this way, and that in this poem Smith is doing just that.
In the second stanza, the drowned man recalls what people said about his life and his death in the moments immediately following his drowning. He corrects their misperceptions; the same misperceptions he tried to correct in life. But now he can speak uninterrupted. After the first three lines, which discuss his penchant for playing around and having fun, and the theory that he died as a result of the cold water shocking his heart into submission, he reminds the reader that he is not speaking for himself, but repeating someone else’s words. He accomplishes this by adding, “They said.” at the end of the stanza. Here is textual confirmation of the idea that he is the sole speaker. Only the person being spoken about would repeat what was said and follow it with an explanation that others were saying these things, not him.
In the third and final stanza, the deceased remarks that the water was not any colder on the day he died than on any other day. He disagrees with the onlookers’ analysis of the situation, noting that the water was always this cold. “Oh, no, no, no, it was too cold always” is the explanation he gives, reminding the onlookers and the reader that this was not a special day on any external level.
Smith follows that with the last two lines of the poem, “I was much too far out all my life/And not waving but drowning.” These lines reinforce the idea that the decedent is the speaker, as they are in the first person and refer to life-long and ultimately life-ending actions and intentions with which only he could be familiar. No one else would know that he had always deliberately courted death by going out too far, just as no one else could know that he was not waving or clowning, but drowning.
As far as the actual drowning is concerned, the text offers confirmation in a number of places that this was not an accident. The most obvious being in the final stanza. Here Smith has her suicidal swimmer talk about the water having always been too cold, which the reader can easily see as indicating that he has never felt truly warm, even in the company of friends. The deceased describing himself as having always swum in cold water, leads naturally to the well-worn metaphor of someone ‘being out in the cold.’ This has implications here of the type of internal chill that even the warmest friendship cannot penetrate; the type of chill that, if not corrected, can lead to suicide.
Also in the final stanza, is the information that the deceased thinks he has been “much too far out” all his life. This is a clear image of someone not enmeshed in the world of family and friends in a way that supports and sustains him. This is a description of someone adrift and alone. The explanation tha,t in addition to being too cold and too far out he was also, “not waving but drowning”, leads to the idea of someone with no connections; someone unable to communicate effectively enough to bond.
Smith gives us a man who has no intimate relationships of any kind. The poem doesn’t tell us the reason for this sad situation. We don’t know if he is afraid of getting too close, if he has been hurt too often to risk it again, if he, or anyone else, has tried to bridge the chasm. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that this man is separated from warmth and friendship by a physical expanse of frigid water and an emotional barrier of some kind, and that this situation leads to his suicide by drowning.
“Not Waving But Drowning” is the post-mortem explanation of a suicide by the victim. Only the person experiencing these intense feelings of alienation could describe his motivations, emotions, and intentions with such authority. And someone so bereft of the warmth of human connection is an ideal candidate for suicide. The textual evidence that the speaker was completely aware of his actions and prepared for their consequences solidifies the case for this interpretation.
Works Cited
Smith, Stevie. “Not Waving
But Drowning.” An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan, Barnet et al.
13th ed.