Native Guard

I chose “Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971” to discuss.  This entire poem, to me, was a question.  The question Tretheway, or Trethway’s narrator, is ultimately asking is: why do we falsely commemorate events?  Why do we feel the need to pretend like that was a good time in the family?  Obviously, there are problems within the family.  In other poems in the collection, Tretheway talks about not being able to understand her mother (“What the Body Can Say”) and also feeling guilty about that fact (“Graveyard Blues”).  The last stanza ask her actual question, and the question that sums up the entire poem:  “why on the back has someone made a list / of our names, the date, the event: nothing / of what’s inside — mother, stepfather’s fist?”  Although the second stanza of the poem mentions some of the inconveniences of the storm, the scene is generally described as beautiful.  She wonders, with such a beautiful photograph, “Why remember anything / but the wonder of those few days” and then reveals to the audience that “what’s inside” is less than desirable.  “What’s inside” is mother, who she doesn’t understand and has problems getting along with, perhaps because she let’s the stepfather abuse her children.  This is evident in the second thing that is listed as being inside the house – the stepfather’s fist.  Why, then, if things were bad, did they take a picture to commemorate the event?  Natasha Tretheway asks a loaded question in this poem.  Why do we do anything we do that isn’t true to life?  Why do we lie, or try to make ourselves look better, or ignore unjustice?  This is not a question that I can answer, and not one that I think the writer expects for anyone to answer, or that she expects to answer.  I think she asks the question to make people think about it.