Thoughts on “The Man Against the Sky” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

While it’s no longer April, I realized that I had only one more poem on my “list” of pieces from The Oxford Book of American Verse, so might as well finish up with one more poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Man Against the Sky.

Mostly alone he goes

This poem is centered on the idea that there are several outlooks on life—perceptions, worldviews, philosophies—and that each individual has the freedom to choose which outlook they’re going to use as they live.

Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken
Down to the perils of a depth not known,
From death defended though by men forsaken,
The bread that every man must eat alone;
He may have walked while others hardly dared
Look on to see him stand where many fell

The first perspective is that of a one who lives courageously, yet isolated. It brings to mind the proverbial problem that “it’s lonely at the top,” because the deeds of great leaders are often admired without a full comprehension of the sacrifices that were a part of those deeds.

Again, he may have gone down easily,

By comfortable altitudes, and found,

As always, underneath him solid ground

The second perspective starts out as an optimist, for whom things always seem to turn out right. However, this optimism comes at a price: Is life really all sunshine and roses, or is the person merely oblivious, self-deceived into not seeing reality?

Why trouble him now who sees and hears

No more than what his innocence requires

And therefore to no other height aspires

The danger here is not simply “ignorance is bliss,” but that an optimist might think everything is fine with his or her life…and so not attempt to better themselves or strive for anything beyond what they already have.

He may have been a cynic, who now, for all

Of anything divine that his effete

Negation may have tasted

As opposed to the optimist, the third perspective is that of cynicism, of one who can be “annoyed that even the sun should have the skies.”

He may have proved a world a sorry thing

In his imagining,

And life a lighted highway to the tomb.

Optimism may not be the truest course of choosing a worldview, but cynicism carries the danger of romanticizing melancholy, and of using all one’s life thinking about the inevitability of death.

Or, mounting with infirm unsearching tread,

His hopes to chaos led

In another sort of comparison of opposites, Robinson pits Romanticism against Science. Romanticism is not only driven by emotions and dreams, but also the idea of fate carrying one from one point of life to another. This would seem to be an “easy” way of life, because it doesn’t require initiative or self-driving.

Revealed at length to his outlived endeavor

Remote and unapproachable forever;

And at his heart there may have gnawed

Sick memories of a dead faith foiled and flawed

However, if and when dreams don’t come true, it leaves the Romantic aimless, feeling purposeless, and betrayed by the fate in which they put their trust.

Deterred by no confusion or surprise

He may have seen with his mechanic eyes

A world without meaning…

On the other hand, the Scientist may be able to seek out fact, without actually finding the “reason” for living. Sometimes by analysis beautiful things lose their appeal (which is why so many people dislike literature, having been forced to diagram and categorize until the pleasure of reading is gone altogether). And other times the Scientist, confident that he or she knows all there is to know, disregards the things they don’t; they are “deterred by no confusion or surprise,” not because they know everything, but because they have suppressed their curiosity and enjoyment of the unknown.

He may have been so great

That satraps would have shivered at his frown

Like the Scientist, the Ruler is a person who is so convince of his or her own authority that they are unwilling (perhaps incapable) of admitting that not everything is under their dominion. A Ruler thinks of himself as a “master of his fate”—yet in the end, he is equally as mortal and helpless as all the other perspectives, “sun-scattered and soon lost.”

Where was he going, this man against the sky?

You know not, nor do I.

In the end, Robinson doesn’t say which of these perspectives is wrong. After all, all of these options have pros and cons. Whatever power or strength things like optimism or knowledge or power give us, those powers also leave us open to fatal flaws like ignorance or nihilism or arrogance.

A little wisdom and much pain,

Falls here too sore and there too tedious,

Are we in anguish or complacency,

Not looking far enough ahead

To see by what mad couriers we are led

Along the roads of the ridiculous,

To pity ourselves and laugh at faith

And while we curse life bear it?

Whatever path we choose, and however we decide to live our life, we must admit that we don’t see the “big picture” of the universe, and that our decision is not so much a choice based on all the facts, but rather a leap of faith into an unknown future.