Titanic David Slavitt Analysis

Within fourteen short and remarkable lines, David Slavitt takes any reader on a cruise of romance and immeasurable excitement aboard the vastly renowned Titanic. His perfect wording facilitates explicit visualization of the Titanic not to mention an experience of the feelings enjoyed by all those aboard the largest cruise ship in history (Anderson, 2005). Nonetheless, the author also depicts another side of the excitement and fun by throwing his audience overboard into the ice-cold water. In my opinion, the author does so with the purpose of ascertaining that the audience associates with the freight and the terror experienced by those who died in the horrifying accident. Evidently, David Slavitt triggers resentment and confusion thus portraying

a joyous death or a celebratory but agonizing ending using formal elements and delicate vocabulary.
In the poem Titanic, David Slavitt makes use of verbal irony all along perhaps with the intent of revealing the reverse side of the actions taken then and those that could be taken today.

In the first line of the poem, David Slavitt uses structural irony when he makes a bold probe of “Who does not love the Titanic?” Surely, there are major reasons why someone would not love the Titanic; for instance, the gruesome deaths experienced by the majority of those aboard the cruise ship. The poet continues to make use of structural irony on the second and third lines when he asks, “Who would not buy?” Probably, none of the people who were on the Titanic when it set-sail for the first and last time would not buy passage for the same with the knowledge of what happened. Out of fear for the piercing ice-cold water and the high probability of drowning to death, no passenger would board the Titanic again. However, the true meaning of this ironic statement is the importance that a man could put on fame and prestige causing them to give up their lives for the same course (Anselmo,

2014).
Allusion becomes evident in David Slavitt’s poem to show the inevitability of death for all humans in the fourth line.

Nonetheless, the inevitability is portrayed in a manner that paints luxurious death as a better form of death as compared to lonely death. The fifth and sixth lines depict death around friends, servants, music, and lights as a sweetener for death when in the real sense death is death. The word ‘crossing’ in line two further denotes connotation of an actual crossing of the ocean not to mention the spiritual passage of one’s life meaning death. Free verses are also evident in the endings of lines seven and eight because there lacks rhyme or pattern making the piece of work more of a conversation between the author and the audience. The one word on the ninth line seeks to lay emphasis on the records of what happened to the Titanic further highlighting the agony and death on the tenth and eleventh lines (Mooi, 2011). These records are said to be accessible to the public in future as a vivid reminder. Satire becomes evident when David Slavitt uses the social status of the class of people on the sixth and seventh lines.

Therefore, the poem takes the reader through the happenings of the Titanic with a vivid illustration of two contradicting realities. Fun, excitement, and joy as well as the horror, freight, and fear of death as in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth lines (Slavitt, 2005). Through inclusive use of vocabulary, formal elements, and placement of situations,

the author expounds on death as a theme, making it clear that death remains death whether it occurs in a surrounding of wealth and riches or that of darkness and solitude.