Skunk Hour Essay Questions

How does the speaker's voice change over the course of the poem? What effect does this have?

The speaker exists only under the surface of the first several stanzas; he (or she; from what we know of Lowell, he was almost certainly writing from his own perspective, but there isn't actually evidence in the poem to prove that) leaves only a trace of himself in the cynicism regarding the millionaire's clothing choices. Then the second half of the poem becomes confessional, as the speaker appears and expresses his self-hatred. In the last scenes of the poem, the speaker shifts to focus on the skunk and finds solace in them. This poem is a fitting final poem to his book; it looks into the speaker's pain and mental illness, but ends with a sense of resolution, looking toward the things that make the speaker feel at peace and looking toward a possibly peaceful future.

Examine the role of religious imagery in this poem and how it relates to the skunks.

The skunks in this poem appear at first in front of the Trinitarian church in town, but their presence acts in opposition to the church, which Lowell describes as "chalk-dry." The skunks, on the other hand, are dripping with color and character, with fire in their "moonstruck eyes." The mother skunk acts as a murky metaphor with religious undertones. Her role as a mother makes her a bringer of salvation, but she is low and earthly in comparison to the vertical church. Perhaps the speaker falls under her spell because she opposes the regality and formality of religion; by the time he wrote this poem, Lowell had already converted to Catholicism and then left the church. When the institutions of religion fail, the skunk rooting through trash cans takes on symbolic power through its earthliness.

How can one interpret the final stanza? Where does it leave the speaker?

The reader can give the mother skunk a number of different meanings. Firstly, she seems defined in relation to her kittens; the speaker seems to be missing such close relationships, and though at least the heiress's family is mentioned, the three characters are described in isolation and interact with nobody. The speaker also may be inspired by how undisturbed she is by her own repulsiveness. He comes across as self-effacing, while she is no such thing. She asserts her existence vigorously. Finally, she "does not scare," and the speaker finds this admirable. He seems to be afraid of himself; part of him sobs while another part of him holds it by the throat. The mother skunk is simpler than that, and that simplicity drives his self-loathing from his mind.

What significance do the characters introduced in the first several stanzas add to the poem?

By describing other people, Lowell distracts himself from himself and his insecurity. However, the three speakers he introduces seem carefully chosen, though the exact motivation is murky. The heiress and the millionaire are linked by their riches, but the decorator is different in that way. These characters seem to act as a critique of wealth, or a critique of society's limited norms regarding the gay decorator, but they are not written in a pointed manner. Instead, they float, isolated like the speaker. The characters seem to exist on a different plane of existence from him and emphasize his loneliness.

These characters also serve to broaden the sense of fear and decay in the final stanzas so it applies to a wider audience than just the speaker. But despite each character's loneliness and despite the decay of their society, these characters do not share the speaker's existential dread. If their inclusion was indeed Lowell's attempt to critique society in general, he does not entirely succeed.