The Dead

As a poem about the dead told from the first-person plural perspective of the living, “The Dead” necessarily carries a message about grief, loss, and the transition made when a loved one passes away. The act of “unburden[ing]” (Line 2) refers to the dead, but it could also be interpreted as a parallel of the living slowly leaving behind the damage and discord of loss. Throughout the seemingly objective account are references and motifs to the living’s connection with these dead people: letters, a home, and stories about the past. The speaker’s very objectivity could be a sign of disassociation, in which the bereaved distance themselves from the reality of grief, just as the dead can no longer really interact with the living through anything but memory. The only hint of the speaker’s true loss comes at the end of the poem, when the unsatisfying presence of the dead is contrasted with their buoyantly lively former existence. The dead haunt the house loudly in ways that show disconnection from the speaker, but the noise they generated when alive was a sign of communion and fellow-feeling: “[W]hen we were children […] they stayed up / drinking all night in the kitchen” (Lines 13-14).