Diction In Anne Carson's Saturday Night As An Adult

Anne Carson’s narrative poem “Saturday Night As an Adult,” spans a young couple’s summer night “out on the town,” told from the anonymous perspective of an unnamed person in their relationship. From a personal perspective – after thoroughly analyzing the poem – the relationship has been established prior to the poem. Throughout the poem, the narrator makes continuous use of the word “we,” describing them: the couple, as a cohesive unit. It is an alternating comparison of “we” and “them;” them being the “narrow people, art people” that they meet up with to go to a restaurant (2). Along with Carson’s use of the juxtapositions “we” and “them,” she also utilizes diction, tone, and irony to further explain the “we’s” and “thems” and to reinforce the poem’s theme of socially navigating through love as a young adult.

Carson’s poem, as previously stated, is a narrative poem, which can also be read as a Shakespearean aside, even though there is a lack of rhyme meter nor are there any definite stanzas. As the narrator goes through the actions of meeting up with the

Foster’s How to Read Literature Like A Professor, he prefaces the chapter by stating that weather in literature is “ is more than just rain or snow.” He stated that “snow is severe, inhospitable, and suffocating (Foster 59),” which is why, in Anne Carson’s poem, the narrator wonders why there is a lack of snow outside after they escape their date (12). It is both ironic that the narrator expected snow since “it is early summer (2),” and that there was no snow after such a rotten outing because, in the case of literature and symbolism, there should have been. There should have been snow to represent the inhospitality of the “unbearably noisy restaurant (6)” and the suffocating conversation. Literature wise there should have been something to represent the anguish of not wanting the date to go well and their wishes not being granted, yet, ironically, all they receive is loneliness within