The Walls Do Not Fall Summary

Over the course of H.D.’s “The Walls Do Not Fall” the implications of pronoun use are exemplified in the way that they emerge in clusters that can be systemically tracked. The use of the third person pronoun in contrast to the first person pronoun and then the insertion of the second person is significant in the sense that it forms a powerful and sentient individual as it transitions from the generalized to the precise. Through the variation of pronoun use within the text, H.D. removes the individual presence from the beginning of the text and then inserts the narrative speaker before broadening the context to include everyone. The initial use of “it” can be referenced back to the “shell-fish” which are separated into the categories of an “oyster, clam” or “mollusc” that
In particular, this can be seen in stanza seven where the shell-fish is described as sensing the “finite” and as a result “it limits its orbit” (13-14). The stanza contains only seven words, of which, five that are placed in a row contain the word “it” which in a rhythmic pattern that is unrelenting in its insistence that the shell-fish is an abstract being that does not refer to any specific individual. This allows the shell-fish to stand in for a multitude of characters in Well’s formulation of reality. The poem exemplifies its lack of specificity by referring to the shell-fish as having the potential to be any related animal such as an “oyster, clam”, or “mollusc” (8-9). Furthering the non-descript attributes that are represented in the word “it” is that H.D. describes the creatures as “amorphous” (11). The image of the shell-fish then has little definite bearings for the readers. And so, the text’s use of pronouns toward the first half of the poem provides a broad context in which the shell-fish is presented as a non-specific thing rather than an