Discuss one or more of the questions on the handout of "The Accident" given to you on Thursday.
Be sure to read the poem several times so as not to miss the meaning of the title (it is not as obvious as one would think)!
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I am not sure if I'm correct in my interpretation, but I think the meaning has more to do with the neighbor and the husband. The subtle looks that they give eachother and the small things they know make me think something happened between them. Perhaps they had an affair of some sort and now both believe it was an accident. The line where the neighbor knows that the husband will make her eggs, even though she hasn't asked yet, seems as if they've been in such a situation before. Having probably had breakfast together and the awkward feeling of the room while they are in the presence of the wife, lead me to believe that they had some kind of accidental affair.
I believe Kasey is on the right track, as I interperated the poem to have 2 accidents which come together.
First we are introduced to the boy who had been "grazed by the delivery van". The second accident is the instance on how the husband, his wife, and the neighbor are all in the same room together. I do not know if they consider their affair an accident, or whether jsut hte situation where all three of them are in the same room is an accident. To me, that part of the poem is unclear. I believe he cracks the eggs "two-handed" as opposed to "one hand" becasue there are two women in the room, as opposed to one woman in the room at a time. This maked the husband uneasy, and he tries to focus.
I'm getting the same vibe as Kasey and Olympia. I do believe there's been some sort of adultry going on between the two.
The wife realizes the cheating when the neighbor answers
"yes" to a question that hasn't been asked. This symbolizes familarity between the two leading the wife to question how many times they've "eaten together," or been together.
The husband of course is nervous, "hands were trembling," with his wife and lover in te same room so he tries to hurry up the occasion. "Hurrying to slide the whole..."
I agree with everyone else in my believe that the husband and the neighbor were having an affair. But instead of the actual affair being an accident, I thought the fact that the neighbor answered the husband's unasked question was the second accident, because it revealed the affair to the narrator.
This is just kind of random idea, but when I read the prompt which said the meaning is not as obvious as one would think, I started trying to go even deeper into the poem. I thought it was significant that the narrator mentions the neighbor still wearing her running clothes and that there was a question about it. Thus I concluded that when the neighbor found her son and brought him to the hospital, she was out for a run. This made me think that perhaps she, if she was having an affair with the husband, was supposed to be hit by the van it was an accident that the son was hit instead.
I know that is most likely WAY off base, but just a thought that popped into my head which I thought I'd throw out there!
I interpreted the meaning of "incredible luck" as irony because of the circumstances. The boy was lucky he didn't die in the accident but it wasn't something to be happy about since he was still kept over night at the hospital. I also connected this saying to the "luck" or ironic turn of events that led to the neighbor in the husband and wife’s house. Which, in turn led to the wife’s discovery of the affair. Her "luck" eventually showed her the affair. Also, the neighbors "still- flushed" appearance alludes to the embarrassment she feels sitting next to her lover's wife eating breakfast. She tries to start conversation by discussing the "hazards of dusk", which has a double meaning as well. The literal hazard of the boy’s accident and the other accidental meeting and discovery of an affair.
Clearly this poem isn't just about the accident that happened to the son. The awkwardness of the situation and the nervousness of the husband reveals an affair between the neighbor and the husband.
I like Michaela's idea too, the running clothes totally point to the direction of the neighbor being the one who was supposed to get hit instead of the son, so there were three accidents here in this poem. The son getting hit, the neighbor still alive, and the revealing of the affair through the answer to the question that wasn't even asked.
The husbands cooking of the eggs are metaphorical because it shows that he has lost the confidence he once had because of the situation he is currently in. The poem states that he used to show off cracking the eggs with one hand, (but now he uses two trembling hands) this action is triggered because he is in a room with a woman that he is possibly having an affair with and his wife, his level of confidence and desire to show off has dwindled because he feels guilty. The poem later states the “hurrying motion of the eggs into the skillet”, and refers to it as a “mess”, this proves that this love triangle is a mess that he wants organized, and kept a secret.
I agree with Kasey and Olympia in that I believe that the accident that the title refers to is an event involving the husband and neighbor.
I think the accident is that the two were in an affair. I think the eggs are a strong symbol of this accident. The husband, however, seems to want the affair to end (again represented through the eggs). The neighbor still seems romantically interested in the husband, as evidenced by her "flustered" behavior. The accident, therein, is more the husbands than the neighbor's. This, I believe, is where I differ with Kasey and Olympia.
the image of the husband acting so nervously with the eggs brings to mind two well known idioms: "walking on eggshells" and "your goose is cooked". Both relate, in that he is in a tricky situation, and has to be very careful, and he doesn't have much of chance of gettting out of it.
the eggs seem to be a metaphor for his marriage. fragile, suddenly he is less confident about it, a "brimming mess", and wants to quiet the fat (or in teh marriage's case, quiet the suspicion caused by the neighbor's slip of the tongue)
i also liked the image of the "long legs..like a ladder to a different world". long legs are a sex symbol, so the fact the wife noticed is a sign of jealousy, and the fact it's a description brings a sex quality to the neighbor. also "ladder to a different world" could mean sex with a different person.
With little else to elaborate on, I decided to find the significance of the neighbor's clothes. Having no idea what "ripstop nylon" was, I did some research and found out that its a type of fabric that is water and fire resistant, commonly used for sails, kites, and hot air balloons. So with this in mind, her clothing can be looked at from 2 angles.
First, the "blue flame" on her running shoes seems to contradict her top. If one is fire resistant, what's the point of adding the description of fire-y shoes? I think this represents that the affair was well hidden, or the flame was smothered if you will. It is also important that the description of her clothing occurs near the beginning of the poem, where the secret has not been blatantly revealed yet.
The second way to look at this is that it symbolizes an attempt to escape. Her clothing symbolize a hot air balloon awaiting to lift of and leave everything behind. Even the "blue" color of her clothes represents the sky and this idea of flying away.
As Kasey stated in the beginning, the husband and neighbor seem as though they had an affair. It correlates with the title "The Accident". I feel that the explanation of the son's injury is related to how the wife feels inside.
The woman's questions to herself reveal her jealousy, I believe. "She had never seen him do it like this before" indicated that her husband never broke the egg with two hands in her presence.
Also, "[h]is hands were trembling" shows how nervous he is in front of the neigbor and his wife. It showed that he was uneasy when his wife and neighbor were in the room at the same time.
At the same time, I feel as though the accident may be that they were together when the wife walked in on them. That could be the accident. The wife, in my opinion, talks as though she knows everything, but is trying to deny it to herself. She knows and all these details that she catches are confirming the truth.
I agree with everyone's interpretation in the double meaning of the accident. There was the car accident involving the neighbor's son, but also the accident that the neighbor revealed the affair to the woman.
After reading throguh this poem once, I understood the hazards of dusk to be the dangers of a child riding a bike in the dark. This is the obvious interpretation of the topic, along with the more obvious accident. However, after reading the poem multiple times I understood the hazards of dusk to relate to the affair. The husband and neighbor's relationship is likely to take place at night, which is dangerous to the marraige. The affair can lead to the downfall of all previous relationships.
I really feel that the main "accident", is the affair. Most of the major clues provided by the author are related to this relationship between man and neighbor. These range from the "hazards of dusk" that Kerry mentioned, to the eggshells representing his loss of confidence, to the "smothering of the flame" that tommy mentioned. The sheer number of signals seems to signify that the reader is supposed to be able to come to this conclusion.
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