Root Cellar Explication

Katie Lopes-Raftery
Ms. Clapp
AP Literature and Composition
23 November 2008

Root Cellar Explication

In the poem Root Cellar the author Theodore Roethke suggests that even though life often appears difficult and unbearable, it is never worth it to give up. He tells of the dark cellar in which nothing appears to be living, but in the end says how they never gave up trying to do so. Through Roethke’s knowledgeable tone and vivid imagery, his last two lines ironically clash with the rest of the poem which is where the readers identify his true attitude towards the cellar.

In the first eight lines of the poem, Roethke creates a dark, repulsive view of the cellar, which the readers also take on. In the cellar, the “shoots dangled and drooped,” verbs with a sluggish connotation (3). These shoots were drooping from “mildewed crates” (4). Roethke uses a lot of words from the gardening register. Growing up in Michigan, he spent a lot of time in a greenhouse which explains his extensive use of gardening terms. He uses a simile to compare the “yellow evil necks” to “tropical snakes” (5). This simile suggests yet another facet of life, evil temptation as used in the Bible. Another simile compares the ripe roots to “old bait” (7). The immediate reaction is to cringe in disgust of the conditions in the cellar. But Roethke continues in describing the rest of the filth in the cellar: “leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery banks” (9). He certainly accomplished the dark, lifeless feeling.

However, in the last two lines of the poem, there is a positive shift where Roethke suggests that despite these living conditions in the cellar, they never give up. Nothing down there would “give up life” (10). Even in the beginning of the poem, he showed that the “bulbs broke out of the boxes hunting for chinks in the dark” (2). Not only did a living plant still yearn for life down there, but even the “dirt kept breathing a small breath” (11). Even the non living thing still never gave up in trying to live down there.

All humans go through tribulations and great difficulties of some kind. Through Roethke’s vivid imagery, he shows that it’s never worth it to give up, despite the unfavorable conditions. Even the non living dirt finds a way to breathe.