22 pages • 44-minute read
Oxygen
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Themes
Death, Loss, and the Afterlife
Questions about spirituality and the afterlife echo throughout “Oxygen.” In the first stanza, Oliver establishes an undercurrent of mortality. She immediately draws attention to the body’s fragility. Every part of the human body needs air to function. In the second line, she alludes to death’s inevitability. The soul only needs oxygen “while it calls the earth its home” (Line 2). However, the speaker does not explain where the soul goes.
Air surrounds everyone, but no one can physically grasp or see it. Its intangibility allows Oliver to blur the lines between life and death. The air gives humanity life, yet it remains uncontrollable. Humans also cannot control the inevitability of death. Additionally, the speaker knows the soul exists but does not know where it goes afterward. The speaker’s lover also appears in the poem, but upstairs and out of the speaker’s sight. The speaker knows their lover lives by hearing their breathing. The contrast between sound and lack of sight places the lover in a liminal space, alive but also dying.
The speaker worries about how they will live without their lover. Their lives are “so close” (Line 14) they are inseparable. However, that inseparability offers bittersweet hope. Oliver consistently emphasizes interconnection and similarities between different entities. Air enters and animates machines, fires, and people. As it does, it enables transformation and interchange. The machine carries air into the lover’s lungs. The fire rises into a gift of “a dozen, singing, deep-red / roses of flame” (Lines 19-20).
Air also offers the ability to keep the couple together after death. Midway through the poem, the speaker calls the lover’s breathing “your life” (Line 14). Many cultures associate the breath and air with the soul and divinity, believing that earthly bodies become something else upon death. If a reader follows this reasoning, the air represents both life and death. It is the life-giver and the soul itself. The speaker may lose the lover’s physical body to death, but the soul may still cleave the speaker’s life.
Interconnection
A central theme of Oliver's corpus revolves around humanity and nature. Throughout her career, Oliver portrayed humans as animals within nature rather than above or separate from it. When her speakers interacted with the outside world, they found spiritual, existential, and personal affirmation.
While "Oxygen" takes place inside a house, the poem still upholds nature as a spiritual source and that people fit within the natural cycle. Oliver makes this apparent from the opening line, "Everything needs it [oxygen]" (Line 1). She uses "everything" to paint existence as unified. In other words, everyone has at least one thing in common with everyone else. A cat and a person's need for oxygen are identical.
Humans even share a kinship with fire in Oliver's poem. Oliver parallels the lover and the fire by describing both through breathing, sound, and body movement. The fire also requires air to survive, its flames growing when the speaker allows more to flow. The similarity also shows a moment of interconnection between humanity and nature. The fire needs the speaker to kindle it, and the speaker needs the fire to give warmth and comforting beauty. They work together to prove what the other needs. Oliver shows the fire expressing "gratitude" (Line 22). However, she leaves it ambiguous enough that the fire could be thankful for the air, the speaker, or both. The ambiguity amplifies how everything in nature intensely depends on each other.
Love as Unity
Oliver posits love as unity forged through shared experiences and affection. She portrays the couple's lives as one. The speaker even states, "I would not know // where to drop the knife" (Lines 15-16) to separate from their lover.
The speaker then says this unified existence has everything "to do / with love" (Lines 17-18). The word "life" (Line 14) implies experiences. Since their lives are "so close" (Line 14) together, the reader can infer that the couple's shared experiences helped forge their lasting bond.
The speaker even depicts their shared experiences to readers: listening to the lover breathing upstairs, knowing which shoulder they are leaning on, knowing it will hurt later. Even when not next to each other, their shared space gives them similar moments—just as the speaker also hears the steady sound of the oxygen machine, the partner upstairs likely feels the heat rising from the fireplace.
In Oliver's poem, people also experience and enact love through mutual caretaking. The speaker first mentions stirring the fire after talking about the machine in their house, portraying the machine as "merciful," (Line 3) and implying that it aids the lover's breathing. Because readers simultaneously hear the machine and see the fire, an association forms between the objects. The reader subconsciously views the fire as a tool for caregiving. Oliver re-enforces the association by introducing the lover right after the fire. The reader can safely assume the speaker makes the fire to help their lover somehow.
Additionally, Oliver creates physical parallels between the fire and the lover. The fire becomes a representation of the lover. When the speaker moves the logs to let more oxygen in, the moment mirrors the air machine giving breath to the lover. The speaker's care strengthens both the fire's health and their bond. The fire gives "deep-red / roses of flame" (Lines 20-21), often a symbol of romance, to the speaker. Oliver portrays love as a reciprocal experience: the fire/lover gives emotional support and appreciation while the speaker gives physical support and aid.
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