Edward A. Robinson was the first most important poet of the Twentieth Century. He is a “peoples poet” his poems’ characters often provide “physiological portraits” of fictional and historical characters suffering an isolation of some sort (990). Robinson is considered a transitional figure; he is the precursor of Modernist poetry. He uses the older traditional influences of form and rhyme and his poems are often simple and neat. However, in juxtaposition of these old and highly stylistic forms, he uses personal subject matter in the make-up of his characters.
The use of these very personal experiences is what contributes to the intrigue that ost readers feel when reading his poems. The imagery of these characters’ problems and the traditional form which feels like poetry to the average reader, is what creates Robinson’s style. In addition, even though most of his poems are about country men or women who are limited in terms of education and world knowledge, they are representative of the human experience. This helps to prevent Robinson, who is from New England, from being pegged as a regionalist writer.
The theme of this poem is very much in keeping with Robinson’s style of writing. He introduces he reader to the deep and darker side of the characters, thereby giving us a view of their humanness. Then, in true modernist fashion we are left to resolve the conundrums these views present to us, on our own. Mr. Floods Party is a perfect example of this type of work. Eben Flood is a character whose memories ebb and flow just like the tide, a loner who is content with the fact that his memories are his most cherished friends.
A man who likes his own company better than the company of others. he likes himself as he has developed through the years. The company of strangers or his remaining peers do not compare to the ones of the days of ld. Eben can contemplate his life, his contemporaries, and have a few drinks without listening to what others have to say. I believe he is alone because he wants to be alone. His “scarred hopes out worn”,(18) he has chosen to stand in the “middle of the road” of life deciding not to go further(19). He has made a choice to remain solitary and has become alienated with his “jug” as his only friend (14).
Mr. Flood climbs to the top of the hill to sit with this companion and physiologically he has alienated himself from the town and what friends it may contain. He sits nd talks to his drink as if the drink was a long lost friend, telling it his woes and complaining to this silent and non-condemning listener. Mr. Flood appears to be a solitary, crotchety man of advanced age who is alone, and perhaps an imbiber of drink by nature. A man who is closer to the end than the beginning of his life, Eben sits alone upon the hill, reflecting upon and celebrating the past years of his life, and accepting the fact that he “may not have many more”(10).
To me this is a poem more about acceptance rather than loss and sorrow or bitterness. Through the use of the drink Mr. Flood is not forsaken, he is in the past with “friends of other days”, and these friends seem to be all the company he needs at the moment (22). Perhaps he is dying and reminiscing that he is old and all his friends have passed away before him. Depending on the reader’s age and station in life, this poem could be interpreted in many ways. As young college students, the poem could appear as a morose and melancholy piece of work.
Mr. Flood is alone, apparently without family or friends. As young students this might seem depressing. They have their whole lives before them, they have many dreams and spirations that have yet to be explored. They could not possibly understand the contentment Eben Flood would feel as he reflected back on both his victories and sorrows. I do think that young readers would enjoy the cadence of this poem and the word play, but would find it hard to understand Eben’s choice to be isolated.
Speaking as an older student I can feel the tug of Mr. Flood’s emotions as he reviews his past, because I, too, have a past that has both victories and sorrows. I understand sometimes the need to sit and reflect but unlike Mr. Flood I anticipate that I have more time to live. Therefore, I till feel the need of company, be it of new friends or old ones. In addition, with the maturity of age, I am able to recognize in others this acceptance of their own mortality, and see how they cloak it around themselves and wear it with dignity.
To the older people reading this poem, maybe it would feel comfortable, like an old pair of shoes. They would have understood Mr. Flood’s references to the “many a change” (34) and would also feel that they too”may not have many more” years ahead of them (10). They would get enjoyment out of these words that express and accept the knowledge of what has been and of what is now left. The aloneness would be one of the things with which they just live because their contemporaries have passed on and any new found friends may be younger or they are a surface level relationship.
They could empathize with Mr. Flood because in some way all human beings have their own “jug”(51) with which to sing “auld lang syne”(42) and when that toast is done they, too, are “again alone”(52) as Mr. Flood finds himself to be. This acceptance is a means of survival, sometimes you must become your own best friend because you are the only one who “Mr. Flood’s Party” seems to present two worlds, a world of illusion and a world f reality.
It is a long poem with a complex stanza, it uses heightened language and gives Mr. Flood emotional and intellectual depth by the use of images and illusions to the past. The central theme is the fleeting passage of our lives and the use of the jug is a symbolic representation of past friends. Presumably, when he was younger, he would eat, drink, and be merry with his friends. Now his only friend left to share his life is his “jug”(27). He treats the jug with utmost respect,” as a mother” (25) would a child, and like it was a living thing ” he set the jug down” because he knows “that most things break”(28).
This is important because the bond with all of his family and friends has been broken by their deaths So this jug is the last link that connects him to his past, friends, and family. He does not want that broken, too. He can sit, sip, and reminisce about the ghost that is his past. With the jug beside him, Eben Flood re-creates his past world and no longer has need of the present one. Perhaps, symbolically, the jug represents Mr. Flood’s life and once it breaks, he will no longer exist, his life I know from several class discussions that the use of the jug and drinking was seen as perhaps Mr. Flood’s way of coping with the present world and his past, and the fact that he is forsaken is seen as an excuse or the reason that he now drinks.
The drink has become his only real surviving friend, the only one that has not left him alone in this world. Mr. Flood’s Party is now over. When someone has a party, he generally invites other human beings for companionship. At this party, laughs, hopes, dreams, wishes, and promises would be shared. Now, Mr. Flood’s life seems over, so he has turned to his jug which represents all that is his past, true or broken, and this becomes his party, his future, his life.