Analysis Of The Poem 'The Glass' By Sharron Olds

Since early history, humanity has expressed an interest in the finite nature of life. Emperor Qin tried to take pills to make him immortal and The Epic of Gilgamesh demonstrate the human desire for eternal life. In the Poem “The Glass,” Sharron Olds explores this fascination with death through the use of visual imagery; specifically through the image of the speaker’s father and the jar of phlegm. Her father is a physical representation of pain and the finite nature of life, while the jar of phlegm represents our idolization of death. In the opening stanza of the poem, the speaker informs the reader that her father was suffering from cancer. Cancer can be representative of how death consumes an entire person. The cancer was described as “growing

The father is described as “not being able to eat anything anymore” because anything he does consume must pass the tumor. Eating is such a vital part of human existence, yet the cancer is given the power to take this away from us. He is described as needing to “gargle, hack and spit” a mouth full of phlegm. This is a clear indication of suffering. By including this detail, Olds is able to demonstrate the consequences of pain and suffering. When control gets taken away from an individual, we must subject ourselves to nature. Nature has the power to consume us and take something we once had so much control over and strip that control from us. It is this aspect of life that truly captures our

This phlegm is a literal image of her fathers forced surrender to death. As stated earlier, her obsession with the jar is illustrated by the number of lines dedicated to her discussion of phlegm leaving her father’s body. She describes the phlegm as “a glass of beer foam, shiny and faintly golden.” Beer is something people consume for enjoyment and the golden color elevates it by giving it an almost angelic feeling. Although this is the normal color of beer, the diction makes it so that she is captivated by the phlegm. As the speaker empties the cup, it is described as “simmering” and it becomes the center of the universe as the “room turn around it [the jar].” This image of a jar become “the center of the universe” demonstrates the importance of death in our lives. It becomes so important that it is how our world functions. The phlegm is a physical representation of the pain of her father and the consuming nature of death, yet she does not find herself disgusted by it. The jar has become a way for her to explore death. The closing of the poem implies the death of her father, but rather than use this time to discuss her father, she chooses to say “in these final mouthfuls.” This places the focus on the cancer. It illustrates how captivated we are by our curiosity of death and our desire to try to understand