Lake (Themes)

Themes

Terminal Illness

Although a specific disease is never identified in the poem, a major theme of "Lake" is the grief and resignation that naturally accompany serious illness, especially when it is terminal. Words such as "heaviness," "faithless," and "withdrawn" all point to a somber mindset, and the phrase "those you cannot heal would remain / unhealed" clearly implies that there is no recovery expected. Warren uses a water motif — a thematic or metaphoric element that recurs throughout a work — to portray both faint hope and final abandonment in the process of dealing with incurable sickness. In the beginning, the subject walks deeper into the lake in a halfhearted effort to "rinse away" emotional pain. Toward the middle of the poem, the "you" is back on the shore, drying off, while a loved one simply stares "back out of the drift," apparently lost in melancholy thoughts. In the end, mountains crumble to the sea, and the lake is "swallowed" by the ocean — a powerful act of nature, not to be denied, like death.

While "Lake" concludes on an obviously sad note, its overall sorrowful tone is evident long before, when the idea of illness is introduced. Even the futile attempt to alleviate grief with the water's caress seems mournful. The "you" is unable to enjoy a moment of solace because he or she knows the moment will soon be gone and there will be only dry, "rootwebbed" land to stand on. This pictorial description is simply a poetic way of saying that you cannot enjoy a moment of life, because the death of one you love is just around the corner. Essentially, the mere presence of terminal illness is a heavy weight on the shoulders of all it touches. In this poem, the identities of those touched are vague at best, but the heaviness of disease is unmistakable.

Disease and Human Perspective

If the most prominent theme in "Lake" is terminal illness, human perspective on the subject is an important companion theme. But the twist in this poem is that the perspective is not that of the person who is ill but of someone who must bear the burden of having a loved one who is ill. That is, the "you" whose thoughts and actions dominate the work is not sick. Rather, it is an ambiguous figure who is dying and who is portrayed only in the brief, vague terms of sitting on the shore with a blank stare on his or her face.

Warren explores this theme with such grace and subtlety that it is almost unnoticeable on first reading. The poem makes no dramatic announcement about perspective, and it is quite easy to assume that the viewpoint of the sick will be given equal consideration to that of the healthy. But that is not the case. The first word of "Lake" establishes the subject of the work, and in line 6, the speaker makes clear that the illnesses are "not your own." Whose, then, are they?

Not until line 18 is anyone else mentioned and then only as an unknown "those." Note, however, that the "you" is consistently paired with the ambiguous third-person reference: "those you cannot heal," "you reach for them, [you] kiss them on the forehead." Even though the one suffering from illness is now brought into the picture, it is still the perspective of the subject "you" that is important. The heaviness described in the poem is that of the subject, not of the ill person, and it is "you" who bears the weight of loss and sorrow and gloom. The subject is portrayed in detail, both emotionally and physically, and from these descriptions one can both see the subject and feel what he or she is going through. The mountain-and-sea metaphor that rounds out the poem compares a progressing disease to a "slow / degrading shuffle to the sea" while it also indicates the hopeless mindset of the subject who imagines the scene in the first place. That is, line 22 makes it clear that "you knew" that the illness "would continue," and, from the subject's perspective, the end of the loved one's life will be like a lake swallowed up by an immense ocean — an ocean indifferent to grief, as it manages only a "yawn."