"Dolor"

“Dolor” In Theodore Roethke’s modern poem, “Dolor”, Roethke illustrates a society where all form of individualism has been destroyed and humanity has been transformed into “living robots”. The poem reflects the theme of the possible devastation and sorrow of living a ritual life rather than living day by day. Roethke emphasizes this theme through the combination of literary devices such as asyndeton, as well as paints a picture with the use of figurative language through personification. Another important way Roethke portrays theme is through tone that is created with a repetitive diction of synonyms. All forms of literary devices combined together to depict Roethke’s central theme and foreshadow the possible future. Noticeably the poem is made up of only two complete sentences, where periods are replaced with commas. The use of asyndeton in both sentences creates a feel of a never-ending list of sadness and misery. Roethke chose to prolong the sentence in order for the reader to feel as though they are deprived of a break because like society in the poem they are trapped as the list goes on and on. Asyndeton is partnered with personification in sentence one to create the gloomy and somber tone. By personifying everyday inanimate objects with feelings such as the “Inexorable sadness of pencils… Misery of manila folders…” (lines 1 & 3), Roethke brings these everyday objects to life in order for them to serve as symbols of how the tasks performed everyday are simply rituals done with no true passion. They simply create boring and diluted individuals that become ultimately the same, photocopied, image. Another major device used in Roethke’s, “Dolor”, is the repetitive diction of synonyms. Throughout the poem, the sense of sadness and hopelessness is highlighted many times only with the use of different words. He uses the repetitive diction of synonyms like, “sadness…dolor…misery…desolation” (lines 1-4), in order to emphasize to the reader the true feeling of the overall poem, being misery. He wants the reader to be aware that the people in modern society are unhappy and go about their lives in a habitual manner. He describes a life that is constrained in a grindingly repetitive institutional environment. He clearly lets the reader know that he is angry and bored with the monotonous setting they create. Roethke goes as far as to even structure the poem in a way that contributes to the very clear theme. As previously stated Roethke’s poem is structured, or made up of only two sentences, these fragment-composed sentences are written in a parallelism manner. All lines are written in a way where they are all very similar in length and wording. Roethke structured the poem like such to give the reader a visual picture of the mirroring image society has become. Whether using figurative language, tone implications, or not so oblivious devices such as the poems physical structure Roethke modern poem is able to effectively show the importance of the individual in a way that was then, is now, and will always be applicable.