It may be strange, but I was drawn to this poem because of the title since I wear my grandma's locket everyday and am extremely attached to it. However, while my locket brings back fond memories of my grandma, John Montague's poem "The Locket" is quite different. While the poem is also reminiscing about someone from his past, it is a compilation of very sad memories of his mother. The first stanza begins the somber tone of the poem since it seems to be speaking of his mother's passing when the opening lines say, "Sing a last song for the lady who has gone." The next stanza continues the sad tone as it begins to explain his mother's ill feelings towards him as a child since he was "coming out both the wrong sex and the wrong way around," which was "Not readily forgiven." I thought the lines in the next stanza "'when poverty comes through the door love flies up the chimney' your favourite saying" were also extremely sad and showed the poor mother-son relationship Montague had.
The opening line in the fourth stanza, "Then you gave me away," addresses the theme of emigration. I found it very interesting that Montague experienced the reversal of what most Irish immigrants did since he was born in the US, but was then sent back to his parent's homeland of Ireland. Doing further research about Montague, I learned that his story becomes sadder because at the age of four he was sent back to Ireland to live with his two aunts since his parents could not afford to keep him and his brothers in the US during the Great Depression. The fact that he went to live with his two aunts reminded my of both Joyce's The Dead and The Cripple of Inishmann.
The final stanza in the poem finally explains the significance of a locket to Montague; "you wore an oval locket with a old picture in it, of a child in Brooklyn." It seems to add a happy tone and ending to the poem and Montague's relationship with his mother since it suggests that while his mother sent him away to Ireland, she always loved him but had a difficult time showing it. Even though I thought this poem was sad, I enjoyed reading it and it was my favorite out of the other poems.
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The two aunts raising a boy with no parents seems to be a common theme in these stories. And I agree, there are a lot of similarities in the pieces that we're reading. But what I like about this poem is the personal spin that Montague places on it. He has a really unique story to tell and I like that he uses the locket's presence to make such an impact on the rest of the piece.
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