A Reflective Journal on Not Waving but Drowning

by Miss S. Wong

      A reflective journal is a record of personal feelings, thoughts, experiences and insights of a student during the learning process of something. In poetry study, a reflective journal is often called an extended response. Learning  to write personal responses to poems is very useful to the secondary students, especially those who take Poems & Songs for an elective in their NSS (New Senior Secondary) studies. In the following is a reflective journal entry I wrote a couple of years back when I took a Language Arts Course in the HKIEd. 

 

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

       In Stevie Smith’s Not Waving but Drowning, the poet tells the story of a man who was drowning but mistaken for waving by the onlookers and at last, not getting any help and not rescued, he died.

      Beyond the surface there is another level of meaning in the poem. ‘Dead but still alive’ is a description of some people’s situations in life. When nobody hears you, you are dead to the world. There are people close around, but nobody understands your feelings or your needs and problems. That is why the dying man complains in the third stanza that the sea is always too cold - People are too cold, too distant, too detached from one another.

     The poet has effectively painted a ridiculous scene of how someone’s cry for help is mistaken for joy. True, many people would wear a mask when going about their life: at school, in the workplace or even at home. However, it is important for them to at least have someone who cares about them and knows them well enough to see when something is going wrong in their lives. This can often be the lifeline that saves one from drowning.

     In the second stanza, there is a change in point of view from the drowned man to the onlookers. They say, ‘Now he’s dead.’ Yet another message from the poem is that there is hope in desperation: maybe the man is not quite dead. He ‘still lay moaning’. He still hopes his voice can be heard and that something which is wrong in his life can be put right.

      It is better late than never to act, to show love and kindness to each other.