One does not always look at their surroundings for more than their everyday appearance, but the author, Theodore Roethke, has taken a normal space and with his poetic description, makes it into a place no one would want to go into. Though root cellars are not a normal part of a house anymore, the picture that comes to mind could just as easily be a dark corner of anyone's basement. The author uses the audience's senses of vision, hearing, and smell in order to give the reader a true feel of the cellar.Firstly, the visual sense of darkness is shown by the line “Bulbs broke.
.. ” which gives the reader a visual sense that everything is in shadow. “Root Cellar” gives that dark and mildew feel that many associate with dark corners of their houses such as crawl spaces and damp spaces under stairs.
When ever one thinks of that type of area, they are inclined to be apprehensive of the shadows. The author plays on this when giving his line, “...
hunting for chinks in the dark,”.When one is in such an underground or separate space, the other sounds of the house are not heard so easily. The author really gives one a sense of the quiet that is felt there, and this is truly exemplified by the last line, “Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. ” One could almost imagine being able to hear the roots quietly groan as they grew and molded over at the same time.
Another sense that the author attacks other then hearing, and vision is one's sense of smell. Not only did the author prepare the reader by alerting, “And what a congress of stinks! , but goes on to include such things as decay and manure being present in the root cellar. There is definitely a sense of being buried, or a sense of death given from the description of the poem, which is shown by two separate lines, firstly “Lolling obscenely,” which sounds like the movement of a dead body, and the more direct line of “Nothing would give up life. ” Theodore Roethke has done a very good job of what it would feel to be underground, and of turning the mundane “Root Cellar” into a dark, foul place that should be avoided by everyone.
