Nineteen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1990

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Power, Sex, and Love

Sexual awakening is a key theme in the poem, but by placing it in the context of a relationship with a skewed power dynamic, the poet explores the complex interaction between power and sex. It is established early on that the speaker’s lover is “an older man / who didn’t tell me he was married” (Lines 3-4). These facts are followed straight by the phrase, “I was a baby, drinking rum and coke” (Line 4). Thus, the man’s age and marital status are juxtaposed with the speaker’s youth; she is the baby in the relationship. This itself tilts the relationship in the favor of the older man; weighing his advantage further is the fact that he keeps crucial information—such as his marriage—from the speaker. By being the holder of secret knowledge, the lover destabilizes the speaker. He alludes to his experience with women when he tells the speaker that the ladies “love” (Line 10) his hair. The speaker feels undermined by this reveal, a fact that can be inferred from the description of her answering smile as foolish. Further, it is suggested that he initiated the relationship with the speaker when he asked to “steal” (Line 17) a kiss from her “the first thick night in the field” (Line 17).

This does not mean that the speaker views the man as a villain, even in hindsight. At the time of the affair, she was fascinated by him, his grown-up aura of coolness and charm. She was also curious about his experiences in Vietnam, his scars, and “how the jungle smelled” (Line 19). She sensed that he held the power of knowledge and experience, and wanted access to it. Her older self can see that the man himself is traumatized by war and possibly using the speaker to evade his own memories. His treatment of her is problematic, but the lover also has his own baggage. The baggage does not cancel out his exploitation. Rather, it coexists with it. Similarly, the speaker’s love for the man can coexist with her inherent suspicion that the relationship between the two is unhealthy.

Growing Up, Freedom, and Choices

“Nineteen” has been described as a coming-of-age poem, since it explores the speaker’s transition from a childlike state to growing freedom and sexual awakening. It is significantly located in the speaker’s first summer away from home. Though it is not clarified why she is in Culpeper, it can be assumed she’s staying in the campgrounds for vacation or work. Removed from the familiar safety and possible constraints of home, the speaker is euphoric with her newfound freedom. Technically an adult, this may be the first time she is exercising her agency as an adult on her own. In such a scenario, her thirst for experience and seizing life are relatable. Like many people on the cusp of adulthood, she experiments with alcohol and has a love affair. She pushes the limits of her newfound freedom. She asks questions and commits transgressions. In fact, she derives pleasure from breaking boundaries and rules, such as when she sneaks off secretly in the fields with her married lover. This shows she is asserting her individual identity against conventional morality and the uniformity of social structures. The poet subtly suggests a conversation about race in this scenario. For the speaker, her sexual awakening is tied up with coming into her own as a Black American. It is implied her lover may be Black, and in associating with him, she is forming an identity distinct from the world of white food symbolic of majority white culture.

However, her new-found power and agency are neither absolute nor uncomplicated. The speaker herself breaks the illusion of a halcyon summer of sexual awakening with several caveats. Her lover is older and married, the latter a fact he hides from the speaker. He brings in his child to visit with nonchalant ease, suggesting he ignores the speaker’s discomfort around this. In the flush of love, the speaker doesn’t allow herself to ask questions around the child’s mother. The lover is elusive and distracts himself from reality with marijuana and sex. In hindsight, the speaker knows the world of grown-up freedoms is not as perfect as it may have appeared to her 19-year-old self. Unlike the speaker’s 19-year-old persona, who is yet to gain life experiences, her lover, the second protagonist of the speaker’s story, represents someone who has lived a full life. He has gone to war, is a father and a husband, and is having an affair with a teenager much younger than him. He has freedom to smoke as much marijuana as he likes and talks about how women love his hair. Yet, freedom hasn’t left him making perfect decisions. His decisions regarding the young speaker are ambiguous at best, he has unprocessed trauma from his war experiences, and he evades reality through marijuana and sex. Thus, the poem suggests, even he does not know the right way to be a grown-up. The speaker realizes in hindsight that growing up means balancing freedom with choices. Rights come with responsibilities, to others and to one’s own self.

The Effect of Trauma

The speaker introduces important details about her lover, such as the fact that he is older and that his beard smelled musty. Often key details, seemingly unrelated, are juxtaposed against each other. This leads to a composite image forming of the lover, one in which his current behavior and his past are laid against each other, as if brushstrokes. For instance, shortly after the speaker explains her lover’s experience preparing marijuana, she notes, “he said / he learned it all in Vietnam” (Lines 14-15). The lover’s seemingly offhand comment about Vietnam is actually loaded with meaning. It suggests something happened in Vietnam that made him learn everything about marijuana. Marijuana and Vietnam are thematically related. It could be that the lover himself was young during the Vietnam War and learned to experiment with cannabis along with other fellow soldiers in his own coming-of-age story. But because historical facts suggest war experiences in Vietnam were extremely traumatizing for most soldiers, it is likely the marijuana use was a means for the lover to cope with reality.

Vietnam crops up again in the poem when the speaker recounts how she “asked and asked” (Line 18) the lover about his time there. This suggests that Vietnam is a silent but potent presence in their relationship and in her imagination. When the speaker wants to know how each of the lover’s scars felt, it suggests the lover carries many scars, both physical and emotional. The lover can only talk of Vietnam in terms of things he did there to soothe himself or make his life easy, such as listening to the music of Marvin Gaye. Significantly, Gaye was critical of America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict, with his famous song “What’s Going On” (1971) being a questioning of the war. This might suggest the lover too has mixed feelings about his time in combat. His trauma around the war is thus multilayered and lasting, and best expressed as evasion and elision. The fact that his experience is trauma becomes clear through the poem’s final, arresting image. The sound of sudden rainfall has the power to take the lover back to Vietnam, alarming him. His reaction to the rainfall shows how he has been affected by his time in combat.