Comparing Resignation And Roethke's Characters

McClatchy, Salinger, and Roethke’s characters share another similarity that is prevalent in the writing: All three are not given or accept the help they need, and as a result, they give up because the pain increases to the point where giving up on their expectations is the only thing they feel they can do. In the poem “Resignation” when McClatchy writes, “none tries to keep company / Or change its fortune” (McClatchy 10-11), he is expressing that the trees are ignored and not assisted in any way. This negligence leads to the pain worsening, as McClatchy discusses this in the poem as well, saying, “To never having been loved as they wanted / Or deserved, to anyone’s sudden infatuation / Gouged into their sides, to all they are forced / To shelter

By accepting that kids will grab for the gold ring, putting themselves in danger, he is accepting that growing up in necessary for everyone. A child cannot be “protected” from falling (growing up), as he thought he could prevent them from doing so by being the catcher in the rye. Thus, he is giving up his desire of staying young and accepting the reality that he must grow up by accepting the children will fall. Finally, in Theodore Roethke’s poem, “In a Dark Time”, the narrator, like Holden and the trees, is not given any assistance. For the entire poem, no person, other than the narrator himself, is acknowledged. Thus, because no help is significant enough to be mentioned, Roethke reveals that no one has offered the narrator any valuable help. Without anyone reaching out to him, his problems begin to build up inside of him, worsening them until once again, a fall from emotional and mental sanity is seen. When the narrator begins to talk about his inner turmoil in the second stanza, he says, “That place among the rocks--is it a cave, / Or a winding path?