My name is Edward ████████, and I love catastrophes. This is a subject that is somewhat well-explored, with the likes of George Carlin exposing our morbid excitement, our joy at the tragic. Yet there is no word to describe it. Schadenfreude is an approximation, but this feeling diverges in the reason for pleasure. Schadenfreude is derived from suffering, while this feeling is derived from grandness, significance, the enactment of the mythos of a disaster.
[music]
Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street –
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.
[music]
I would imagine that most readers would, at first, be struck with horror at the concept that Kunitz presents here. A shallow reading would leave you with the impression of a suicidal first grader, which is uniquely off-putting—the juxtaposition of the pure innocence of childhood with the ultimate darkness of death.
But Kunitz doesn't dwell on tragedy here. And this mix of innocence and darkness isn't treated as a tragedy, rather it is dramatized. I would go as far as to say that the concept of end of the world is glorified in some places. The narrator feels no fear as far as we are told. But at the dinner table he does comment on feeling a mix of sadness yet excitement: a melodramatic bittersweetness.
Even though the narrator is only in first grade, in many ways the poem does sort of tell a coming of age story. I certainly got that vibe while reading the roof stanza, which I'll come back to later. This moment is so impactful not just because the narrator believed it would be the end of the world, but because it is a major emotional shift in his life. This marks the shift from feeling only simple emotions to more complex emotions: emotions that you can't label, amalgamations of other emotions, emotions you might not completely understand.
[music]
Much of the narrator's optimism, I believe, comes from his spirituality. Because of his belief in an afterlife, the narrator seems to understand death as a transformation more so than an ending. Not believing death leads to annihilation makes his feelings of excitement regarding the end of the world somewhat more understandable to me.
It's important to note that the narrator doesn't have the kind of spirituality we see from the “wild” preacher, who uses his religion for fear, for shame, for obedience. He manipulates and misleads this young child into believing that the world will end. Luckily the narrator doesn't seem to believe the preacher beyond this, like how he implies the only way people can be saved is by repenting their sins.
No, the young narrator is presented in a different light from the preacher: hopeful, independent, innocent.
[music]
I can't help but be captivated by the image that this poem presents at its conclusion: a young boy reposing on the top of that coarse gravel roof, the edge of the physical world, gazing towards the stars, where he believes the afterlife lies, and being grazed by the fresh night air. He is sprawled in a white gown, mirroring the image of an angel ascending to heaven. And as he speaks to his father, who could be impossibly far away, he lays vulnerable to an imaginary incoming comet.
Roofs aren't meant to be walked on, making them a symbol for escape and freedom from the rules of the regular world. That's why they are such a common setting in coming of age stories. I can't even think of a coming of age movie without a roof scene at the peak or nadir of the character's journey; in this case, he's at both. The narrator is alone in his thoughts in a fashion uncharacteristic of most young children.
The poem is structured in two stanzas. The first stanza goes on and on, 29 lines long, and centers on the mundane world. The second stanza is refreshingly brief, less than a third of the length of the first, and centers on life beyond. The first stanza is chaotic, packed with events and descriptions, while the second allows us to breathe, to focus on the questions greater than ourselves.
It isn't even that the narrator is unhappy with his life as it is. It's the break from routine that excites him, like all children. The possibility, accepted by the narrator as a near certainty, of the end of the world is only if the comet “wandered off its course”, and Kunitz means this both literally and figuratively. The three greatest words for a child are “no school tomorrow”: a deviation from the norm, freedom from the labor of learning. So it's no wonder a child would be so excited at this event once these words are linked to it, even if it means the end of the world.
The excitement that the narrator feels is also certainly stemming from feelings of isolation from his family. Physically from his father, obviously, but also emotionally from his mother and sisters, who are blissfully unaware of his adventure to the roof after he's banished from the dinner table.
[music]
What immediately stood out to me were the similarities between the narrator and the poet. Similar to the narrator, Kunitz lost his father only weeks before he was born and would grow up with his mother and his older sisters. Halley's Comet passed in 1910, when Kunitz was four years old—not first grade but close.
If it is a poem from Kunitz's perspective, as it almost certainly is, at least in part, then it is a brilliant retelling of the confusing emotions of a child through the language of an adult.
The poem allows us to see a small part of Kunitz's mind that we ordinarily wouldn't see. This kind of reaction to tragedy is usually associated with shame or guilt. But with the decades of time separating us from the events of the story, through establishing this experience as the inner workings of a child, who is expected to be inexperienced and even slightly amoral, it becomes more acceptable to admit.