‘Household Gods’
In the poem ‘Household Gods’, Philip Hobsbaum uses an extended metaphor of a house and the furniture within to depict six household gods dying in the household objects as the relationship between a two people has ended, leaving the house deserted.
Upon first reading this poem, different things come into mind about the true meaning of it. First of all you are lead to believe that a person, perhaps a child, is watching a couple going through a break up with a line such as ‘hardly at all remember how her slim Long fingers once caressed me – was that how At one time she touched him’. The use of me, him, and her makes the reader believe that it is actually a person speaking. Upon further reading and re reading it becomes evermore clear that the poem is written from an omniscient point of view and that there are in fact multiple speakers as the stanzas are written in quotations.
When reading the poem the reader sees six different ‘speakers’ in this piece of strophic poetry that are actually household objects. This can be seen throughout each stanza. In the first stanza this idea of household objects talking becomes clear to the reader ‘I mirrored their breaking lives…I saw them. I was there’ The questions that come to mind are who could mirror the breaking lives of two people? A child, family member, a friend? It becomes clear that it is not actually a person talking because of the use of mirror, a person can see and feel the breaking lives but cannot mirror it. It is not only in the first stanza, but in all of the stanzas the reader has to relate to the characteristics of a household item, to find out who is talking. In the next stanza we see ‘I have so long been silent, even now Hardly at all remember how her slim long fingers once caressed me…’ a piano is thought of as it was caressed by a woman’s fingers, like piano keys are caressed carefully by musicians and that it has been silent for so long. In the third stanza a cup or mug is talking from the lines ‘His lips on mine in the morning, or, in darkness…warmed my clay’. The clay being what the cup is made from and the lips on the brim (lips) of the cup itself. In the fourth stanza you can see a carpet in the house talking from the line ‘They lay me down to serve their steady feet’ . The house itself is talking in the next stanza; ‘bit by bit they painted my walls, the ceiling, Made me in terms of their vision…’ . The sixth household item ‘talking’ in the poem says ‘my hands repeat themselves, so does not time,…I gather myself to cough one cautious chime’ from this you have an idea that it is an old chiming clock as the hands of a clock repeat themselves countless times.
