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Transcript

"45 Mercy Street" by Anne Sexton

In Anne's dream, she is able to wander the city streets, seeking her childhood home. She reminisces over familiar childhood scenes- the structure of the house, her family, the furniture. She can recall it all perfectly but she cannot seem to find it.

She desperately misses her grandmother, more than anything. Her fondest childhood memories are of her grandmother being the parental figure in her life. Anne refers to her father as "the stranger", and herself as "Horrid." It seems that her being born disrupts this picture-perfect heritage that she has created.

She brings herself back to the present, where she wanders the city streets, mentioning the pills in her purse. She feels timeless-trapped between her memories and her current life.

She feels her reality slipping away, her suburban life and family. She feels as if she has "sucked up" her children, and her husband keeps himself from seeing her true self. She comes to the harsh realization that she is searching for a street, and a mercy that she will never find.

She "throws" her nostalgia away, into the river, insisting that she will not be tangled up in her memories anymore, but is still clearly repressed by her current life.

In my dream,

drilling into the marrow

of my entire bone,

my real dream,

I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill

searching for a street sign -

namely MERCY STREET.

Not there.

I try the Back Bay.

Not there.

Not there.

And yet I know the number.

45 Mercy Street.

I know the stained-glass window

of the foyer,

the three flights of the house

with its parquet floors.

I know the furniture and

mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,

the servants.

I know the cupboard of Spode

the boat of ice, solid silver,

where the butter sits in neat squares

like strange giant’s teeth

on the big mahogany table.

I know it well.

Not there.

Where did you go?

45 Mercy Street,

with great-grandmother

kneeling in her whale-bone corset

and praying gently but fiercely

to the wash basin,

at five A.M.

at noon

dozing in her wiggy rocker,

grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,

grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,

and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower

on her forehead to cover the curl

of when she was good and when she was…

And where she was begat

and in a generation

the third she will beget,

me,

with the stranger’s seed blooming

into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress

and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,

enough pills, my wallet, my keys,

and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?

I walk. I walk.

I hold matches at street signs

for it is dark,

as dark as the leathery dead

and I have lost my green Ford,

my house in the suburbs,

two little kids

sucked up like pollen by the bee in me

and a husband

who has wiped off his eyes

in order not to see my inside out

and I am walking and looking

and this is no dream

just my oily life

where the people are alibis

and the street is unfindable for an

entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down -

I don’t care!

Bolt the door, mercy,

erase the number,

rip down the street sign,

what can it matter,

what can it matter to this cheapskate

who wants to own the past

that went out on a dead ship

and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,

as women do,

and fish swim back and forth

between the dollars and the lipstick.

I pick them out,

one by one

and throw them at the street signs,

and shoot my pocketbook

into the Charles River.

Next I pull the dream off

and slam into the cement wall

of the clumsy calendar

I live in,

my life,

and its hauled up

notebooks.

Mercy. adj.

compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm

-home, address; desire to return to childhood

-Mercy, an escape from her depression/mental struggles

-Mercy, a way for her to return to her Nana

-Life itself having mercy on her

Questions?

Theme

  • Childhood vs. Adulthood
  • Simplicity vs. Depression
  • Nana/care-taker vs. Responsibility
  • Longing for past colliding with the harsh reality that Anne's childhood was not as perfect as she recalls (abuse, lack of parental guidance, etc.)

Connotation

  • Finally choosing to cut ties with her past, as well as separate herself from the societal norms of the time "what women do" (purse, make-up, etc.)
  • History of depression/suicidal thoughts
  • Apparently abusive parents
  • Reportedly abusive to her children
  • Only memories of happiness tied to childhood, Nana
  • 45 Mercy Road (1976)
  • 45 Mercy Road as a failed anti-suicide note
  • Successful suicide finally allowed her to reach 45 Mercy Road

Works Cited

  • http://www.glastonberrygrove.net/reference/annesexton/
  • http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-sexton
  • http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/sexton/sexton_life.htm
  • http://www.shareyouressays.com/117052/short-summary-of-45-mercy-street-by-anne-sexton

SHIFT!

SHIFT!

Anne Sexton

TONE SHIFT!

  • Newton, Massachusetts,
  • 9 Nov. 1928-4 Oct. 1974
  • Ralph Harvey and Mary Gray Staples
  • Comfortable Middle-class Circumstances
  • Eloped with Alfred "Kayo" Sexton (age 19)
  • Asphyxiated herself with carbon monoxide in Boston
  • 45 Mercy Street (posthumously 1976)

Presented by SaraGrace Stefan

Ms. Brown

AP Literature

12/12/13

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