The Skeleton in the Dog Wood Essay -- Literary Analysis, Rash

The poem, â€Å"The Skeleton in the Dogwood† by Ron Rash, dramatizes the conflict between love and how easily that love can be shattered, as demonstrated by two lovers who, while taking a walk in spring, find a skeleton hanging in a dogwood tree. The lovers get the town’s sheriff, however, he cannot figure out who the person was, who killed him, or why. So the sheriff helps the lovers bury the bones and moves on. In the winter the lovers get married and on their wedding night they dream about the dead man with â€Å"spring flowers† (15) in his hand. The first stanza tells of the lovers finding the skeleton in the dogwood branches. The stanza uses the words â€Å"promised blessing† (2) to describe what a new spring, just like a new love, brings to people. However, neither spring nor love nor anything else is perfect. The skeleton is in stark contrast to the rebirth and new life that is associated with spring, but it exists just like problems will always exist in lovers’ relationships. People go looking for the beauty of spring, like lovers try their best to make their love last, but sometimes they find dead animals or, in this case, a skeleton, and sometimes love doesn’t last. Line two and three are â€Å"more than spring’s promised blessing; on new beginnings hanging†. Using the word hanging demonstrates how the promises of spring, and more importantly love, are very fragile gifts that can easily fall off the tree, that is their life, and disappear from a person forever. If lovers want their love to last they should not shake the tree, or test their love, but simply let it be. Hanging also creates a very ugly image with almost anyone, whether they think of people being hanged or meat hanging in a freezer like in Rocky, very few people can get a pos... ...you do not need to know them so you are not told them. â€Å"The Skeleton in the Dogwood† does not try to be a confusing poem. â€Å"The Skeleton in the Dogwood† starts so lovely with a couple taking a walk on a spring day. Suddenly, a mysterious skeleton creates a shift in the tone of the poem. However, the tone quickly shifts back to being pleasant when the lovers decide to treat the skeleton as one of their own and give him a funeral. For their efforts the lovers are blessed on their wedding night by the dead man. The poem goes through the same stages of a struggling relationship. At first, everything is great and new and exciting and nothing can go wrong. Eventually troubles emerge, but for the couple that puts the effort into fixing their relationship the darkness, like the dark tone of the poem, will disappear and the original wonders of the relationship will return.