The Vacuum - Analytical Essay

Expressing emotions full of loneliness and sorrow through writing is a difficult undertaking --
especially when it involves the death of a companion who has spent countless hours with you,
and brought so much meaning to your life. Howard Nemerov attempted to express such emotions
in his poem titled; "The Vacuum." The speaker of the poem has lost his wife, but instead of
simply stating, "My life is meaningless without my wife and I miss her so much" he uses
figurative language to reveal his current state of mind. Howard Nemerov uses personification,
metaphors, similes, sensory details, and poetic structure in "The Vacuum" to allow the reader to
experience, through visualization, the emotions involved with losing one wife, enabling the
reader to react to the agony.

Personification is defined as a figure of speech in which a thing, quality, or idea is represented as

a person. In "The Vacuum," personification is used throughout the poem, allowing the author to
use a vacuum cleaner to parallel the feelings that the husband had for his wife before she died, as
well as the feelings he has now that his wife has passed away. Personification is foreshadowed
on lines seven and eight when it says, "But when my old woman died her soul/ Went into that
vacuum cleaner." To the husband, the vacuum is his personified wife. On line two it reads, "The
vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet," suggesting that his wife/vacuum, refuses to speak to
the husband because it is offended by all of the "filth" (11) in his present life; filth that wouldn't
be there if she was alive. This argument is supported with further personification in lines three
through five when its states, "its mouth/ Grinning into the floor, maybe at my/ Slovenly life, my
dog-dead youth." The vacuum seems to be 'grinning' at him, amused by how pathetic he has
become. Not only is personification an important tool in "the vacuum," but the author also
utilizes metaphors.

The vacuum itself is a metaphor alluring to the vacuum in the husbands' life that opened after she
died. Without the company of his wife his "house is quiet now" (1). He has no one to talk to at
home, and the vacuum cleaner, which to him is a remnant of his wife, "sulks in the corner closet"
(2). What once was an active social life full of fulfillment has dwindled down to stagnant
loneliness. Line eleven starts with the metaphor, "there is old filth everywhere," comparing how
his wife "used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair," (11) to clean up the filth, but now the
filth is building up, and without the presence of his wife he does not have the will power to clean
it himself.

Similes are another figure of speech that Nemerov's uses throughout the poem to further the
depth of the husbands emotional state. Nemerov writes, "Its bag limp as a stopped lung (3), to
draw a comparison between the inactive vacuum bag and inactive lungs. Breathing lungs
symbolize life. No longer does the vacuum, or the speaker's wife, breathe with life. This simile
contributes to the vacuum's personification of his wife because the vacuum is a living, breathing
entity to the husband. Line eight and nine state, "I can't bear/to see the bag swell like a belly."
The simile and personification in those lines suggest that when the husband vacuums he
experiences, causing him to re-live the day his wife died. The sensory details in lines nine and
ten possibly allude to his wife's death being painful. Line nine continues with, "eating the dust,"
(9) a phrase that sounds very similar to biting the dust, which is a metaphor for dying. While the
vacuum is eating the dust he may remember when his wife was "beginning to howl" (10) because
she was dying in pain. The final simile concludes, "life is cheap as dirt" (13). "Cheap as dirt"
symbolizes how the husband feels without his wife; his life's worth is as valuable as dirt in her
absence.

Nemerov's use of personification, metaphors, similes, and structure puts me into the husband's
perspective. When I read the poem, I see the vacuum in the corner closet through the husband's
eyes, and feel his overwhelming emotions of loneliness, shame, anger, and despair. I hear the
noise of the vacuum in his head as he is having flashbacks of his wife crawling "in the corner and
under the [stairs]" (12). The metaphors allow me to sense his "hungry, angry heart" that "hangs
on and howls, biting at the air" (14-15). The similes provide clues to the nature of her death, and
the poetic structure melts it all together into one big picture.