The Great Scarf Of Birds Analysis

John Updike’s poem “The Great Scarf of Birds” expresses the varying emotions the narrator experiences as he witnesses certain events from nature. His narration of the birds throughout the poem acts as numerous forms of imagery and symbolism concerning him and his life, and this becomes a recollection of the varying emotional stances he comes to terms with that he has experienced in his life. These changes are so gradually and powerfully expressed because of a fluent use of diction and figurative language, specifically symbolism and simile, and aided by organization.
The poem opens upon comparisons, with lines 3 through 8 reading, “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets/ of their branches. The maples/ were colored like apples,/part orange and red, part green./ The elms, already transparent trees,/ seemed swaying vases full of sky.” The narrator’s surroundings in this poem illustrate him; and the similes suggest that he is not himself, and instead he acts like others. Just as the maples are colored like apples, he

holds an outer façade to portray an image unlike himself, and this is only the first example of nature in comparison to him, whereas the remaining length of the poem relies on birds, with them becoming the focal point. As the poem continues, the narrator details a sloped section of the golf course on which he is viewing such aspects of nature, and he blames the land for the abundance of birds that have emerged around him.
The organization Updike employs emulates a change of inner struggles- where the narrator conforms to others- to blame- in which his surroundings are made accountable.

The diction surrounding this alteration enhances the change in attitude from self-loath to outer-disgust, such as in lines 8 through 13, which read, “The sky/ was dramatic with great straggling V’s/ of geese streaming south, mare’s tails above them./ Their trumpeting made us look up and around./ The course sloped into salt marshes,/ and this seemed to cause the abundance of birds.” No longer does he use nature as symbolism of himself; instead he spills blame upon it and deters it from himself. The diction in the lines detailing the new birds he witnesses places nature once more outside of his correlation, as lines 14 through 18 read, “As if out of the Bible/ or science fiction,/ a cloud appeared, a cloud of dots/ like iron filings, which a magnet/ underneath the paper

undulates.”
The Bible and science fiction make it utterly impossible to compare the narrator to the dots, which ultimately appear to be birds, ones he says become “less marvelous… and merely huge” as they fly closer. It is not until the final few lines that his view on the birds alters, changing from a general disgust and inability to relate such creatures and himself. A feeling of admiration blossoms as he recalls similarly to the beginning how beautiful and graceful nature can be, as well as how comparable aspects are to one another, such the board green color of grass to a bird. The ending reads, “I watched, one bird, / prompted by accident or will to lead,/ ceased resting; and, lifting in a casual billow,/ the flock ascended as a lady’s scarf… Long had it been since my heart/ had been lifted as it was by the lifting of that great scarf.” By the end he is once more able to connect himself to nature. It is the organization of opening and ending on such similar notes that affirms he had lost this ability, which he has once more reclaimed.