After the titanic (Mahon) - LC English

The belief that people think the speaker got away easy and that he avoided the ultimate punishment (death)

They say I got away in a boat

The sinking of the speakers reputation

I sank as far that night as any hero

• Ironic comparison to ice - fate of the titanic

• He goes ice cold watching his life’s work sinking - no thought to the victims drowning in front of his very eyes

I turned to ice to watch my costly life go thundering down in a pandemonium

Meaning of the word choice “pandemonium”

Allusion to Milton’s paradise where the name for hell is pandemonium

Sense of shame and isolation as well as self punishment

Now I hide in a lonely house behind the sea

He is left constant reminders by the sea of the women and children who gave their lives for him

Where the tide leaves broken toys and hatboxes silently at my door

Natures connotations of hope and renewal mean nothing to him

The showers of April, flowers of May mean nothing to me

The man self isolates as punishment and self medicates his depression on cocaine

The old man stays in bed on seaward mornings after nights of wind, takes his cocaine and will see no one

The speaker cannot relate to those who drowned and their faces haunt him constantly

I drown again with all those dim faces I never understood

Self pity

My poor soul

The weight of his sins sink his heart like a stone

Heart breaks loose and rolls down like a stone

He feels as though he died that day and that people may as well treat him as such

Include me in your lamentations