15 pages • 30 minutes read
The Expatriates
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Symbols & Motifs
Norwegian Trees
The expatriates of the title function as a symbol in the poem. The trees are the setting for the central “moment” (Line 1) of the poem, but they are also symbols of the lovers themselves. The trees make up a “false New England forest” (Line 6), as they are “misplanted” (Line 7) with “synthetic / roots” (Lines 8-9). Because the trees do not actually belong in New England, the “forest [is only] whole” (Line 24) in the speaker’s dreams. The trees are the expatriates of the title, and they are stand-ins for the inner lives of the lovers in the poem. Like the trees, the lovers feel false and misplaced in their “single beds” (Line 20). The speaker lives “in [her] house” (Line 27) which is not the house of their lover.
Parallel Lines
While the Norwegian trees dominate the poem’s symbolic landscape, the poem is structurally unified by a visual motif of parallel lines. The poem’s liberal use of repetition emphasizes the parallel pattern, as echoed phrases make the lines of the poem appear parallel. Here is an example: “It was a moment / to clutch at or a moment,” (Lines 1-2) and “it was a time / butchered from time” (Lines 30-31).
The parallel lines are most visible in the central image of the forest, growing “shaft by shaft in perfect rows” (Line 13), a “place of parallel trees” (Line 15). However, the parallel lines also appear in the two figures walking side by side in “the white line” (Line 19) and in the two “single beds” (Line 20) where they sleep. The lines also appear in the “ruled” (Line 26) forest and the “pillars [of] a dim basement” (Line 28). This motif unifies the two lovers of the poem with the symbol of the transplanted forest.
Grasping & Holding
Images that involve hands, literal and figurative, and the act of reaching out appear throughout the poem. The limbs of the trees and the hands of the lovers frequently recur in the poem, often in the act of grasping or holding. From the first stanza, the lost moment is described as one “to clutch at” (Line 2), an action that hands must enact. The roots of the transplanted trees “[are] barging out of the dirt” (Line 9), seeking to grab on to the air just as the lovers “held hands” (Line 10). When the speaker pines for their beloved, they thinks first of the forest and second of the lover’s “sweet hand” (Line 25) which are not “leaving mine” (Line 27). Even the image of the “dim basement of men” is “holding up [a] foreign ground” (Line 29), presumably with the strength of their arms and hands.
The poem’s images of grasping, clutching and holding emphasize the speaker’s desire to grasp and hold the moment which has been “butchered from time” (Line 31).
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