A Story of Two Poems

                I was intrigued by The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window and Charlie Howard’s Descent.  While reading each I kept relating the poems back to myself.  I’m not sure why, but it made sense to me when I put myself in the position of the people in the poem. 

            “Her hands are pressed white against the concrete moulding of the tenement building” (Harjo, lines 2-3) tells me that this woman, whoever she might be, is holding onto her life by just the tips of her fingers.  Maybe she really does want to keep living and is looking for a sign, or someone to stop her.  Why wouldn’t she just jump if there weren’t any doubt?  The poem tells that she is “her mother's daughter and her father's son” (Harjo, line 12).  She was an only child and meant everything to her parents.  She was the beautiful, girly, perfect daughter that her mother had always wanted.  She was the baseball cap wearing, little leaguer that her father had always wanted in a son.  She was “a woman of children, of the baby, Carlos, and of Margaret, and of Jimmy” (Harjo, lines 10-11).  Clearly, this woman was not alone.  She had loving parents and children who depended on her.  Why is she hanging from the thirteenth floor window?  Is she surrounded by all of these people that she has given a piece of herself to but still alone? Does she feel as though she can no longer live up to the standards all of these family members have set for her, or perhaps she thinks she isn’t deserving of so much love and affection?  “The woman hangs from the 13th floor window crying for the lost beauty of her own life.  She sees the sun falling west over the grey plane of Chicago.  She thinks she remembers listening to her own life break loose, as she falls from the 13th floor window on the east side of Chicago, or as she climbs back up to claim herself again.” (Harjo, final stanza).  The woman has taken her last look at her life and her beautiful surroundings and in that final instant decides to never look at any of it again in the same way.  Once she let go, she was refresh, renewed, and free of any mortal battles.

            Charlie Howard’s Descent was different.  He hadn’t given up on life.  From the poem I gathered that this man was battered and mocked for the lifestyle he had chosen.  “He took the insults in and gave them a place to live” (Doty, lines 25-26).  Whenever someone insulted him he didn’t say anything, didn’t stand up for himself.  He took the insults in and let them fester within himself.  The boys surrounding him saw that he was a decent man and wouldn’t bow down to the horrors of the world around him.  Not even in the end did the boys get the best of him.  

Here is another writers analysis of The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window.