90 North by Randall Jarrell
"90 North" by Randall Jarrell is a poignant poem that explores the theme of disillusionment through the stark contrast between childhood dreams and adult realities. The narrative unfolds in two settings: the imaginative world of a child yearning to conquer the North Pole, inspired by the adventurous tales of figures like Admiral Richard Byrd, and the sobering realization of adulthood, where those dreams are rendered meaningless. The poem's protagonist reflects on his past dreams of discovery, only to find himself at a metaphorical summit surrounded by the remnants of lost aspirations, represented by frozen companions and a profound sense of emptiness.
As the speaker acknowledges the futility of his earlier ambitions, he faces the grim truth that his journey must now lead him southward, away from hope and towards a painful awareness of life's harsh realities. The imagery of darkness is prevalent, emphasizing that wisdom gained from experience often comes through suffering. Ultimately, "90 North" serves as a stark meditation on the failure of dreams, suggesting that the pursuit of meaning in life can lead to a recognition of inherent pain and emptiness. This exploration resonates with anyone who has grappled with the gap between aspiration and reality.
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90 North by Randall Jarrell
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1941 (collected in Blood for a Stranger, 1942)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“90 North” is a poem of pained disillusion, one of Jarrell’s early poems which makes vividly real the distance between the imagined world and the real one. The poem has two settings, the past, in which the child dreamed of discovering the North Pole, his dreams perhaps based on reading of Admiral Richard Byrd and his adventures. However, as an adult, he realizes that the child’s dreams of conquest were meaningless. He revisits his child self arriving there at the imagined summit, surrounded by his dogs and the corpses of his frozen companions. Sheltered from the ice by his furs, he can only ask, “And now what? Why, go back.” His steps now must always be “to the south,” toward bitter awareness of the emptiness of his life. Only in the “Cloud-Cuckoo-Land” of dreams could he make a meaningful discovery; where he is in reality there is only darkness, ignorance, and pain. The last four lines have the word “darkness” repeated four times, and what comes from the darkness, according to the poem, is not enlightenment but pain. “And we call it wisdom. It is pain.” All dreams fail; all effort comes to nothing. This is one of the starkest of Jarrell’s disillusionment poems, in which the reality of pain and darkness is contrasted not with what might have been but what he once dreamed might be.
Bibliography
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Chappell, Fred. “The Indivisible Presence of Randall Jarrell.” North Carolina Literary Review 1, no. 1 (Summer, 1992): 8-13.
Cyr, Marc D. “Randall Jarrell’s Answerable Style: Revision of Elegy in ’The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.’” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 46, no. 1 (Spring, 2004): 92-106.
Flynn, Richard. Randall Jarrell and the Lost World of Childhood. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.
Hammer, Langdon. “Who Was Randall Jarrell?” Yale Review 79 (1990): 389-405.
Jarrell, Mary. Remembering Randall: A Memoir of Poet, Critic, and Teacher Randall Jarrell. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
Pritchard, William. Randall Jarrell: A Literary Life. New York: Farrar, 1990.
Quinn, Sr. Bernetta. Randall Jarrell. Boston: Twayne, 1981.