Study Questions

1. By ten o'clock in the evening many families are preparing for sleep. This brief poem explores the pressures that attempt to make us conform to social expectations, to be just like everyone else. What do you think the first line of the poem means when it says “The houses are haunted”? Are the people in the houses fully alive? Or are they half-alive, like ghosts?
2. What are the connotations (see page 1534 in your textbook for a definition of this term) for the color "white"? What do you think the poet is suggesting by stating that the nightgowns in line two are white rather than colorful?
3. What are "socks of lace"? What are "beaded ceintures"? Why are the people in their houses not wearing such unusual clothes? Line seven in the poem says that the people do not want to appear "strange"; why do they not want to be different from everyone else?
4. The poem suggests that these people who are dressed the same and live the same kinds of life, unwilling to be different or even to be themselves, are also not free even in their dreams. Why are they not going to "dream of baboons and periwinkles"?
5. The final three lines of the poem present a person who is not like the people in the houses. How does that person differ from the rest of society? What does it mean to catch tigers? What kind of animals are tigers? Are they easy to catch? What qualities would a person need to catch them? What do the tigers symbolize? Also what does “red weather” mean? What are the connotations of red?
6. In this poem what does Wallace Stevens suggest about society? What does he think individuals in society should do? What does the title suggest about the people in the nightgowns and the sailor?
7. More about literary techniques.