Natasha Trethewey In Native Guard

Unmarked Graves of Our Past

A cemetery is where the past is buried; the people within them carry stories, ideas, and moments that make up the history we know today. Some of that history is buried there to forget, while sometimes, cemeteries serve as a way of remembering. It is in this duality that author of Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey, conveys one of the biggest themes. Trethewey, in her use of cemeteries does not simply praise the act of remembering history; rather she injects guilt in the act of burying the past. Through showing the guilt in turning away from her mother’s grave, and in parallel through showing society turning away from the graves and lives of the Native Guard, Trethewey tries to instill guilt within society in order to encourage readers to never forget the past.

Trethewey’s first use of grave and cemetery imagery outlines the guilt and regret that she feels surrounding her actions before, during, and after her mother’s burial. In one of the first references, in what she refers to as “childish vanity,” a young

Trethewey gives her mother the “short lived” daffodil (Trethewey 7). In something normally perceived an innocent act, Trethewey finds great guilt. As they become “graveside flowers,” Trethewey reveals their true message: “be taken with yourself, /they said to me; Die early, to my mother” (7).
This self-centered nature is again addressed within the poem of her mother’s burial: “Graveyard Blues.” While she attends the funeral, Trethewey ultimately bows out early, “leaving her [mother] where she lay” (8). As she “turned to walk away,” Trethewey can also been seen as turning away from her mother’s memory. Trethewey also uses the lines, “I wander now among the names of the dead:/My mother’s name, stone pillow for my head,” to reference that perhaps her mother’s name lies only in her head, and not on her gravestone (8). This unmarked grave of her mother further indicates that Trethewey has almost erased her mother from history.
With this erasure, Trethewey also presents her guilt to the reader.

The sun “glared down” on her as she turned away from her mother’s grave (8). Even later on within the book, she describes her mother’s grave as a “blister on [her] heart” (43). Through showing personal mistakes involving burying her mother and her memory, Trethewey pulls the audience into an emotionally invested state that disapproves of her own actions.

As the reader enters this state, Trethewey can now focus on the Native Guards themselves: Society’s, and the reader’s, own forgotten history. The author uses extensive graveyard references in order to bring attention to the lack of graves for the Native Guard, and when the Native Guard’s graves are referenced, they are “lost” or erased (44). The abundance of references towards their graves “unmarked by any headstones” swarms the reader until they have no way to escape the guilt in forgetting the Native Guard

(46).
Lastly, the reader is brought to Ship Island in the poem “Elegy for the Native Guards.” This is Trethewey’s one last effort in showing the effects of forgetting history. This grand monument to lost soldiers is “incomplete” without the native guards, like so many other monuments are incomplete because of historical erasure (44). In experiencing Trethewey’s personal guilt through the graves of her past, the reader understands the guilt is justified. Once Trethewey has the audience where she wants them, she turns the focus to the audience and society. Through the example of the lack of proper burial for the Native Guards, the author shows society’s neglect towards preserving history and calls for change.