Spring and All

In William Carlos Williams’ poem “Spring and All,” he uses vivid images and metaphors to compare nature to those who endure a deadly disease while quarantined in a contagious hospital. The piece of land surrounding the hospital has been tainted by the dead of winter, which is used to represent those who lost their lives due to the sickness. Then the speaker describes the appreciated transformation the land begins to show, as winter slowly turns into spring. The dead piece of land beginning to show signs of life is used to represent the few that survive and will get to leave the dreary hospital. The speaker describes the piece of land surrounding the hospital as muddy, lifeless, and cold. The description of the land during winter is used to symbolize the gloomy feel of the hospital and those who will never leave it, consumed by their illness. Like winter, those who have died are like “twiggy/ stuff of bushes and small trees/ with dead, brown leaves under them/ leafless vines-,” (10-13.) The lifelessness of the land and the bare dead plants is used as a metaphor for the tragic deaths of the quarantined patients. The speaker describes the sky and weather as “mottled clouds driven from/ the northeast – a cold wind,” (3-4.) The cold wind is used to symbolize the cold chill of death and the misery that will blow through families who lost their loved ones. The poem then begins to portray the beginning of spring and the diseased filled land commences on a slow transformation with a chance of vitality. The land is “lifeless in appearance, sluggish/ dazed spring approaches,” (14-15.) These lines are meant to symbolize the lives of those who struggled and survived through the illness. At first they are stricken ill and appear dead in their beds, but as spring approaches they awaken weak, but alive and full of hope. Spring approaches and “now the stark dignity of/ entrance – Still, the profound change/ has come upon them: rooted, they/ grip down and begin to awaken,”