Apart from their use in expressing emotion, tears have two other functions: they lubricate the eyes so that the lids can move over them smoothly as you blink they wash away foreign bodies. While watching the movie, tears rolled down his cheeks. In a way, the son's mother comes back to life in her resemblance to her son.

This passage also connects to the theme of the gray area between life and death, as the son looks like his mother who has passed away. In this passage, the speaker discusses aging and death through a conversation between an aging father and his son. It is uncanny how she rests there, as plain as day, in the boy's face. Things worked out or they didn't work out and now here he was, an old man, an old man who each year of his life bit or shook doubt as if to injure if not to kill, an old man with a good-looking son who resembles his deceased mother. This time, she is referencing Emily Dickinson's poem 'Hope is a thing with feathers-' and refuting the poet's claim.Ī father tells his son the thing he regrets most about his life is the amount of time he has spent worrying about it. The speaker also introduces one of the many interlocutors that make a presence throughout Don't Let Me Be Lonely. The fact of institutionalized inequality-that a few lives are considered more important than 'billions of lives'-is the 'real source' of the speaker's sadness. The speaker notes that her sadness is related to American politics, though her emotions and what she calls 'American optimism' are not directly related. The speaker meditates on the feeling of sadness as it connects to memory. These themes come in Rankine's discussion of a particular event: George W. These lines from Don't Let Me Be Lonely introduce the themes of mental health, loneliness, and collective identities versus particular identities. I don't know, I just find when the news comes on I switch the channel. Or, perhaps, Emily Dickinson, my love, hope was never a thing with feathers. Perhaps this is the real source of my sadness. I write this without breaking my heart, without bursting into anything. Or, as there are billions of lives, my sadness is alive alongside the recognition that billions of lives never mattered.

or our American optimism, the sadness lies in the recognition that a life can not matter.

The sadness is not really about George W.

Dont let me be lonely claudia rankine