Lying Awake

Explication on “Lying Awake”

When reading Snodgrass's "Lying Awake" I felt completely lost. After reading the first two stanzas it seems as if Snodgrass is talking about someone feeling pressured to do something that they may not want to do or go forward with. In the first stanza he describes the moth as being "squirmed up, sniper style, between/The Rusty edges of the screen;" This might indicate the moth being someone that is involved in law enforcement or someone who can't seem to leave a controlling relationship. The poem continues to read "Lay here, content, in some, corner hole./Now that we've settled into bed/Though, he can't sleep. Overhead,/ he hurls himself at the blank wall." This stanza might indicate that the speaker is very much afraid of his or her partner because they were content in a corner hole but he or she cannot sleep.

The next stanza is where the descriptions of things get a lot more vivid but also get more confusing. The speaker says "Each night hordes of these flutterers haunt/And climb by study windowpane;/Fired by the reflection, their insane/Eyes gleam;they know what they want." I believe that the hordes of flutterers might be bad influences on the speaker. He seems as if he doesn't wan to do have any part of it but they are haunting him and he can see their insane eyes gleam which may relate to drug abuse. He ends the stanza with something kind of disturbing because he says that they know what they want from the speaker. That probably means that they want him to give in to the life of misery and drugs.

He goes on to wonder "How do the petulant things survive? Out in the fields they have a place/And proper work, furthering the race;/Why this blind fanatical drive?" He is contemplating on why does this influence come to him and not