Dolor Roethke Analysis

In the poem "Dolor" by Theodor Roethke, one is drawn in with the weight of the poem despite its seemingly simple subject matter. Everyday items such as pencils are given deep sadness that forces the reader to want more. Roethke portrays this sad tone through personification, repetition, metaphors, and immense detail. "Dolor" is depicted through a sorrowful and gloomy theme beginning with its title and increasing in intensity towards the end of the poem.

The narrator begins the poem with a look into his time in an office. The stiffness is almost visible to the reader in lines such as "I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,/ Neat in their boxes" (Roethke lines 1-2). The despair can be felt within the poem. As Cynthia Kotana describes, "The persona is buried under the detritus of office life: pencils, pads, folders, paper clips. The sheer weight of inanimate objects is felt as unbearable" (Kotana). Roethke places a heaviness in the poem on each individual object through personification. By giving the inanimate objects these human characteristics, one can imagine them in a deeper sense thus causing the emotion of the poem to stand out. The simplicity of an office is now filled with depth, "sadness of pencils," "misery of manilla folders," and the "Lonely reception room" (Roethke lines 1,3,5).
Each item described in the poem is defined with its own sadness, "The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher" and "Desolation in immaculate public places" (Roethke lines 4,6). Office life is simple but it does not allow the freedom and independence of the world around it. Roethke expresses this when he describes the people as, "the duplicate grey standard faces" (Roethke line 13). Without creativity, an office is comparable to a mine, dark and dangerous. Through in-depth descriptions of the dejected items of the office, Roethke fully portrays that