17 pages • 34 minutes read
A Careful Passion
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Symbols & Motifs
Tables
Walcott repeatedly turns to the image of the inn’s tables throughout “A Careful Passion.” He begins by describing them as “fixed like islands near a hedge” (Line 3) in the first stanza, emphasizing their immobility. As the poem develops, they represent the speaker’s feelings of stasis and ennui. In the third stanza, he writes, “We are lapped gently in the sentiment / Of a small table by the harbor’s edge” (Lines 21-22). This phrasing, and the strangeness of the table creating a sentiment for the speaker, underscores his interpretation of the scene; rather than experiencing the romance of the ocean, or any number of other, more passionate images he could note, he returns to the banality of the small table. He repeats it nearly verbatim in the next stanza and again in the fifth: “To twirl a glass and smile, as in pain, / At a small table by the water’s edge” (Lines 32-33). The table is an anchor for him, the solid image he returns to rather than engaging with his lover’s conversation, and rather than feeling an emotional response to her request to break up. When he repeats the line at the end of the fifth stanza, he completes the story’s cycle and emphasizes the feeling of rigidness; nothing has changed about the table or the image, suggesting that he believes this romantic interlude with his lover has done little to change him on a deeper level.
Seagulls
Walcott introduces seagulls at the end of the second stanza: “Above our heads, the rusty cries / Of gulls revolving in the wind” (Lines 17-18). As the poem cycles back to Walcott’s chosen imagery of the tables at the edge of the sea, the speaker observes these repetitive cycles in everything he watches, including the gulls. The image evokes a feeling of stasis and entrapment, and the speaker calls their cries “rusty” (Line 17), suggesting something old, creaky, and no longer efficient. However, the speaker observes, “The gulls seem happy in their element” (Line 20). This perception might be the speaker trying to convince himself of their contentment or talk himself into happiness despite the outward things he cannot control. Ultimately, he projects his own feelings of unhappiness and unrest on the gulls, noting in the final stanza, “Only the gulls, hunting the water’s edge / Wheel like our lives, seeking something worth pity” (Lines 46-47). The gulls have morphed from something creaky and routine into a symbol of the speaker’s dissatisfaction in his relationship. Rather than happily circling above the patrons at the Cruise Inn, they now “hunt” as a part of their continued wheeling through life; their desires have changed. Like the speaker, they desire “something worth pity” (Line 47), implying that any form of emotional response, even one of pity, would improve their status.
The Heart
Walcott brings up the heart in three distinct moments in “A Careful Passion.” With the title priming the reader to understand the hesitant, protective tone of the speaker, his first acknowledgement of his heart reads as if full of self-protection: “Hearts learn to die well that have died before” (Line 23). Until this point, the speaker is disengaged from his lover. His interjection, an oblique admission that love has burned him before, suggests that he means to face this break-up with detachment, thus allowing his heart to “die well” (Line 23). He describes his heart as “buried” (Line 31) in the fourth stanza, saying he must “resurrect [it] again” (Line 31), implying that he has practice in this field.
His ideas about the heart become more complicated in the following stanza, when he says, “All is exhilaration on the eve, / Especially, when the self-seeking heart / So desperate for some mirror to believe / Finds in strange eyes the old original curse” (Lines 36-39). While the language is complex and difficult to track, the reader begins to understand that the speaker, rather than being strictly disengaged, does seek a kind of partnered love, one that will allow him to better understand his own heart, but too often instead has experienced “the old original curse” (Line 39).
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