Human Nature in Stevens “The E

Wallace Stevens “The Emperor of Ice Cream” is a poem about the frivolity in human nature. Located in the setting of a wake, the poem uses plain, nondescript characters, and a disposition to eating ice cream to show the reader the lack of concern for unpleasant duties and the inclination towards luxury and lushness in us all. The use of metaphors further depicts some of the deeper meanings in the poem, and are broken into the two stanzas of the poem.

The poem is formed in two stanzas: the first is where the ice cream is being made and where all the people are, and the second is of a bedroom where a corpse is lying unattended. In the first stanza Stevens gives the descriptions of all the characters but the dead, which due to the customs of the times were most likely neighbors of the deceased. The characters are described as average, working class people. The usage of simple average people help the reader to understand that their unrefined actions are those of undisciplined human nature, desires of the flesh, so to speak. This is revealed by Stevens writing, “Let the wenches dawdle is such dress, as they are used to wear, and let the boys bring flowers in last

The second stanza contains the description of the dead woman and a couple of her belongings (not to mention a much darker undertone). This is the only stanza with a small amount of sympathy depicted for the deceased. The evidence of her cheap dresser with missing knobs and her hand-stitched sheet tells of her lack of wealth and simplicity (9-10). While the mourners at the wake spend their time in the kitchen indulging their flesh, the reader is taken to the bedroom with the corpse. It is there that is presented the harsh unpleasantness of duty in life, in comparison to the curious humor in death. Still, the dead woman is covered with a sheet of her own making, showing a certain amount of emotion for this woman. The sheet was an attempt of the deceased to create a luxury to disguise her lacks in life, though the fact that she had to make it herself again shows low societal stature. Steven writes, “If her horny feet protrude, they come to show how cold she is, and dumb” (13-14). The use of dumb here is not used as in intelligence, but as in mute. More likely it is used as another representation of the dichotomy between death and life. Although the sheet is spread to hide her cold, unresponsive face, it is

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