Not Waving but Drowning

The poem qualifies as a lyric: It is short and expresses the personal emotions of the nameless dead man and the unidentified group of people around him. In the authorial/autobiographical context, the poem arguably expresses Smith’s personal ideas about death and how she sometimes felt during her life.

The poem is also something of a parable—a story meant to teach the reader a lesson or illustrate some kind of complex truth. On a literal level, the poem is about a dying person. He is dead because the others thought he was waving at them when he was drowning and needed help. On a figurative level, the poem suggests that outward appearances are often deceiving and that the distress of others can be dangerously easy to overlook or ignore. People might think a person is fine (waving) when they are actually struggling (drowning) and in need of some help.

The poem starts with a declaration, “Nobody heard him, the dead man” (Line 1). The tone is stark. A man is dead, and he might have died because no one was around to communicate with him. In the following line, the speaker uses imagery—a picture—to clarify the condition of the dead man. The “dead man” is not actually dead yet because “still he lay moaning” (Line 2). Ironically, the dead man is alive: He is even expressing himself through his moans. Thus, the unidentified speaker is somewhat elusive and shares contradictory information about the man’s current state.

The poem’s narrative style blends together different voices and perspectives. There are no quotation marks, so it as if the speaker’s voice, the dead man’s voice, and the voice of the people are all one voice. However, the voices still maintain distinct tones that differentiate them. The speaker’s voice is factual and detached: They present the image and tell the reader who said what without offering their own opinion. The dead man’s voice is sad and desolate, while the group of onlookers have a somewhat condescending tone.

The dead man’s desolate tone manifests via his diction—the words he uses. He says, “I was much further out than you thought / And not waving but drowning” (Lines 3-4). The dead man was isolated; he was away from the others. They knew he was away, but they did not notice the extent of his isolation. The misunderstanding sparks the poem’s central tragedy: They thought the dead man was swimming, but he was not making a friendly gesture (a wave)—instead, he was suffering (drowning).

The speaker’s peculiar attitude towards dialogue continues in Stanza 2 when the people start speaking without an introduction. The reader has to wait till the end of the stanza to find out that there is a group of nameless people around the dead man. The lack of quotation marks and the absent attribution at the start of the stanza reinforce the poem’s bewildering tone. It is as if Smith wants to make the reader as confused as the dead man and the people. She wants to bring the reader into the muddled environment.

When the other people speak, their tone is somewhat patronizing. They say, “Poor chap, he always loved larking / And now he’s dead” (Lines 5-6). The “poor chap” label turns him into an object of pity. It makes him seem helpless and somewhat pathetic. The detail about “larking” (Line 5) furthers their superior tone. They insinuate that it is not their fault he is dead—it is his fault, because he loved “larking” or doing mischievous things. The knowledge of the dead man’s larks indicates that the people have a personal relationship with him. They are not strangers, as they claim to be familiar with his personality.

The people continue their pompous tone when they state, “It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way” (Line 7). The others create a cause of death that has little to do with why the dead man drowned. The presumptuous tone makes the nameless people appear obtuse and unthoughtful; they are still searching for excuses as to why they did not recognize the man’s distress and intervene.

The dead man has to correct the other people. The tone becomes argumentative. The others think they know why the dead man is moaning, and the dead man has to counter their assumption. Once again, the speaker does not introduce who is speaking. This time, the speaker waits until the second line in the stanza where they add, in a parenthetical, that these words belong to the dead man. He says, “Oh, no no no, it was too cold always” (Line 9, emphasis added). The dead man has always felt isolated or left out in the cold. He explains, “I was much too far out all my life / And not waving but drowning” (Lines 11-12, emphasis added). Thus, the poem features repetition: Lines 11-12 repeat, with slightly different wording, what the dead man told the people in Lines 3-4. The appearance of repetition reinforces the inattentiveness of the group and points to some of the poem's key themes, such as misunderstanding, loneliness, and the different meanings behind death.