The Truth The Dead Know Figurative Language

Death is a subject that humans know frighteningly little about. Most only know of how it overcomes people with grief, how it consumes them, and they are unable to move past the losses. The confessional poem, “The Truth the Dead Know” by Anne Sexton speaks about Sexton’s loss as she conveys her emotions through the speaker, who is essentially her. As she goes on about the death of her parents, mourning and grieving, the speaker realizes that is not the correct way to live, since that is all you will ever do if you never are able to move past the losses in your life. Sexton uses many different figurative language and poetic devices along with different themes and other emotional connotations to convey her emotions to her audience.

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In stanza two, she goes on to compare the waves of the sea to “an iron gate”, as both are strong, dependable, and always in constant motion. This is for her to better her mental, emotional, and even spiritual health in a better environment. Moving on, the poet mentions “My darling” in line nine, alluding to the fact that she has somebody to lean on, a significant other or close friend, whom she has plans to enjoy her life with. This is yet another drastic shift, as before, it was implied that the speaker was entirely alone, having to fake happiness around others, yet here it is said that the both of them are supposedly healing together mentally. In the fourth stanza, line thirteen, she questions the dead, and what happens to them: “And what of the dead?” As this is rhetorical, it results in the audience thinking about what truly happens to the dead, and what they might know, that we humans do not. She mentions in the final line “They refuse/ to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone” (Sexton 16). As they are dead, unable to move, breathe, eat, sleep, or behave as if they were alive, she compares them to stones, and says that if the oceans had stopped moving, even they would not be as still and stone-like as a dead human, since the oceans would still have life within them. Likewise, this means