Better Days — A. F. Moritz — IB English Literature (2015)
Being young meant having little to no worries and although blissful youth has become tainted by the growing pressures young people face, it remains a time we all wish we could savour everlastingly. In ‘Better Days’ by A.F. Mortiz, the author explores the euphoria associated with adolescence before depicting the distresses experienced when making the transition from childhood to adulthood in the form of a coming-of-age story. The narrator adopts a highly reflective tone when nostalgically recounting his past, and later shifts to a more prosaic tone when describing the struggles of early manhood and finally the tranquility of old age.
The poem is organised into three-lined non-end rhymed stanzas. In the first three stanzas, the speaker celebrates his youth when reflecting on his teenage years. He compares his reminiscing to a “bird crossing [his] vision”, this idyllic image framed in a simile impresses the reader and highlights the speaker’s awe in recounting these memories. In the second stanza, the speaker recounts and praises his years of sexual indulgences, painting a vivid image of “moist nights” spent with “girls” where “boys ripened”. The visual imagery employed here is evocative as the reader can visualise bodies transmitting their “moist[ure]” and heat into the atmosphere as they would engage in sexual congress, and the metaphoric phrase “boys ripened” conveys the sexual maturity these young men had reached, which the speaker takes much pride in.
In line five, the speaker admits to having been an advocate of youthful iconoclasm as he comically describes his hedonistic tendencies and youthful rebellion as “holy drunkness” and a “violation of the comic boundaries, defiances that never failed or brought disaster”. Here, the speaker prides himself in “never” having suffered any severe repercussions for the transgressions he committed in his youth and the author applies the oxymoron “holy drunkness” to emphasise the speaker’s opposition to the cherished beliefs he would have likely been expected and encouraged to uphold by his parents other authority figures young people normally feel compelled to rebel against.
In the third and fourth stanzas, the speaker ensconces the reader into a rural setting and impresses us with picturesque images. The speaker talks of ‘Days on the backs and in breath of horses’, the visceral image a horse’s ‘back’ together with the tactile imagery employed when describing the ‘breath’ of the horse that could be felt expresses the bucolic awe often associated with farm animals and rural life in general. This is accentuated by the sensual images of “smooth waves” being tossed on the “muscular water”. The sibilant adjective “smooth” together with its dynamic interaction with the “muscular water” creates in this stanza a surreal dreamlike mood and the maritime makes this setting captivating and awe-inspiring to the reader.
The fifth stanza is the poem’s volta as the speaker shifts from a positively nostalgic tone to a more adverse and prosaic one when describing the difficulties he encountered as a young adult. The speaker admits that the positive memories of his youth that he alludes to in the earlier stanzas “never come back” but are instead “blott[ed]” by the thronging images of hardships he suffered during a “time of poverty” and “struggle”. The speaker also interjects the formal aside “the muddy seedtime of early manhood”. The bright colours and aestival images evoked in the previous stanzas when the speaker describes his rural origins are juxtaposed by the dull and “muddy” colours and images evoked in this stanza to establish the severe contrast of attitudes the speaker possesses towards these antithetical phases of his life. Whereas the speaker celebrates the former phase of his life — a time of pleasant adolescence — he condemns the latter for it had been a dismal period in which he had to abandon his juvenile pursuits and was required to assume his responsibilities as a man.
From the seventh to ninth stanzas, the speaker reflects on more recent years where the pressures of “manhood” forced him to adopt a recumbent position from which he would observe his surroundings pensively. The speaker talks of an “old man” whom he would spend “night after night” in a “diner […] watching”. On its own, this line conveys the speaker’s high regard for this figure whom he does not give a name, which suggests that he never actually conversed with him. Moreover, the speaker later describes the old man as being “a studious worker” and reveals that he was an “artist” who would “always” wear the “same worn-out suit”. The adjective “studious” along with the “worn-out suit” the old man dons demonstrate his assiduousness and it becomes clear that this level of commitment and engagement with his work fascinates the speaker. His occupation as an artist and willingness to spend “long nights […] under the sour light” give the “old man” a sense of purpose, which cannot be said about the poem’s protagonist who in paying so much attention to his surroundings has become suspended in existence with little to no sense of purpose apart from admiring this figure whom he later admits to and is regretful of never having spoken to.
The concluding stanza includes the speaker’s epiphanic revelation and ends on an ambiguous note. The speaker refers to the “old man” as a “friend” whom he would “see each day” but “never spoke to” and the contemplative tone the speaker adopts here expresses the regret he is grappling with. In the penultimate line, the speaker retrospectively realises that these days he had “hoped soon to disappear” deserved more appreciation and that his juvenile years together with his perennial admiration of this “old man” form the cumulative sum of “Better Days” that can only exist as memories to be enjoyed.
