More setting is observed as the poet uses “Sunday morning”, the Sabbath day, as the time of departure of his mother. The Sabbath day, is a day of death as well as life after death and thus showing poet’s thought about the afterlife and gives emphasis on the theme of life and death in the poem.
Throughout the entire poem, the poet uses a lugubrious tone to show his mindset on things matter regarding loss through death and the theme of abandonment. He uses words like “fledged her with wings of night” which have negative connotations as well as an image of a strong and forceful action. As such, the poet creates a picture of forcefully snatching away the mother from the narrator and as such creating a sense of heartless abandonment of the child, leaving the child helpless and sorrowful.
The poet also makes use of the element of time to bring across his purpose in this poem. At least 30 years separates the time when the narrator was young child till the time his mother died. So when she does die, he remembers the earlier episode and sees the connection. The way the poem is written brings the two things together as if they happen in quick succession, when in fact it was quite a big gap in time. This brings about a sense of deep remembrance for the mother, misses her a lot. As such, by making use of the element of time, the poet manages to show readers the feelings of the narrator after being left alone and abandoned through the process of death.
The birds were “flocking”, which in itself indicates large numbers. They “crammed” the church roof as if there was no room for any more. Their noises were very loud. There were so many that he could only guess at their numbers and those numbers still grew. The poet uses the great magnitude of birds to show the magnitude of this event in the narrator’s eyes. The hyperbole is used to show the extent of importance of this occurrence in the life of the narrator, an event of great importance, showing his dependence on his mother as well as the sorrow he felt after being left alone.
The poet also uses rhythm to showcase the narrator’s feelings towards this issue of abandonment from loss through death. The narrator remains alone in the “clutch” while all the others, his mother as symbolized by the birds, have gone “beyond.... touch”: the rhyme here emphasizes the idea that he has been left behind and feels desolate and alone, which shows the theme of abandonment through death.
Alliteration is another literary device the poet uses in hope of bringing across his theme of abandonment due to loss through death. Alliteration is observed in “picketed piercingly the passing”, showing the emphasis on the lugubrious tone, as the words used are sharp, and plosive, drawing attention to it and forceful in the sense like forcefully taking away mother from narrator.
In final line, poet brings readers back to the narrator both as a child and a man, standing alone in the church, which has been a kind of nest for the birds. Because the departure of the birds symbolize the departure of his mother, and how he imagines himself to be left alone as an unhatched egg when the rest of the flock departs for warmer weather. And as such, the poet creates this imagery which enhances the effect of abandonment through loss in death, as it is clearly visible in the minds of readers, allowing them to be able to understand and also feel the same way the narrator is feeling, that of melancholy and sorrow.
There is much significance in the title Testing the Reality, the poet should be referring to the fusing of the two periods of time into the same time in the narrator’s mind. This smart usage of the element of time, helps to bring across the idea that the narrator is in a state of mental instability, due to the sudden loss of a mother whom the narrator had utter reliance on. And as such, the poet is “Testing the Reality” in the sense that he is fusing the two time periods together as though they occurred simultaneously, when in fact, the time gap was more than 30 years.
At the end of the poem, we readers are left with the touching picture of a little boy watching a flock of birds fly away and, superimposed on that, the image of the same person in his later years remembering the death of his mother, like a photographic double exposure.
