Bag of Bones

At the heart of “Bag of Bones” is an individual tragedy that represents countless similar tragedies. The setting of the mass grave site—in which the unnamed woman has just discovered her loved one’s remains at the poem’s opening—immediately sets up a powerful contrast between the anonymity of mass death and the individuality of the life that was lost. The speaker points out that the bag of bones the unnamed woman holds is “like all other bags / in all other trembling hands” (Lines 5-6), drawing the reader’s attention to how depressingly common such searches for human remains have become in this unnamed woman’s country. Just as the woman and her quest represent the many other grieving relations and their own quests for remains, so too does the skull and bones she collects represent the many other anonymous victims of this violence: The victim’s bones are “like thousands of bones / in the mass graveyard” (Lines 7-8). This zooming out from the singular example to the general situation demonstrates to the reader how an individual tragedy connects to and mirrors the national collective tragedy.

But the speaker then stresses that the anonymity of mass death is not the full story. The speaker contrasts the apparent anonymity of the remains with the very specific significance that these remains hold for the unnamed woman. While others might not be able to differentiate between the different bones and human body fragments, the unnamed woman is able to recognize her loved one: For her, “His skull [is] not like any other skull” (Line 9). As the unnamed woman gazes on the skull, she tries to mentally reconstruct his face and remembers the life her loved one once had, which in turn offers the reader brief glimpses into the man’s personality: He used to love music—specifically music that “that told his own story” (Line 12); his nose “never knew clean air” (Line 14)—suggesting a country full of pollution, both literal and figurative; and the gaping mouth cavity of the skull calls to the unnamed woman’s mind his love for her: “a mouth, open like a chasm / was not like that when he kissed her” (Lines 15-16). The anonymity of mass death is therefore momentarily suspended in the unnamed woman’s act of personal recollection.

The contrast between the simple pleasures of ordinary life—such as music and kissing—and the unnatural disruption of that ordinary life cycle through violence becomes sharper in the lines that follow. The speaker asks a series of rhetorical questions. The first highlights the senselessness of the mass killings, pointing out that the human need to make meaning out of tragic events is eclipsed here by the sheer magnitude of destruction: “What does it mean to die all this death / in a place where the darkness plays all this silence?” (Lines 21-22). The next question wonders at the strange juxtaposition between the memory of the living person and the disturbing appearance of the skull and bones: “What does it mean to meet your loved ones now / with all of these hollow places [in their skulls]?” (Lines 23-24). The third question grieves that under this state-sanctioned violence, the usual life cycle has been disrupted, creating a situation in which mothers outlive their children, and end up with nothing more than the dead remains—a mere “handful of bones” (Line 2)—of the sons and daughters they once gave life to (Lines 25-29).

The speaker then turns to the source of this violent death: a cruel dictatorship that has slaughtered the dictator’s own people. The speaker stresses that these mass deaths are anonymous by design to enable the dictator to evade punishment for his crimes. The dictator seeks to dehumanize and erase his victims, so that there could never be a full accounting of who has been killed: The dictator “does not give receipts / when he takes your life” (Lines 31-32). The speaker then contrasts the dictator and the victim the unnamed woman has found. Though like his victim, the dictator is apparently human, he is seemingly immune from the kind of fate that befell the woman’s loved one: Repeating the phrase used earlier to describe the unnamed woman’s ability to distinguish her loved one’s remains: “his skull not like any other skull” (Line 9), the speaker points out that the dictator “has a skull, too, a huge one / not like any other skull” (Lines 35-36). But while the uniqueness of the loved one’s skull earlier in the poem spoke to his status as someone much-cherished by the unnamed woman, the living dictator’s “huge” skull houses an evil mind that plans mass death: “It solved by itself a math problem / That multiplied the one death by millions / to equal homeland” (Lines 37-39). The speaker’s reference to “homeland”—and the mass deaths committed in the name of that homeland—reinforces the fact that these deaths are the result of the dictator’s deliberate, state-sponsored violence.

The speaker acknowledges that the dictator, although the mastermind of the violence, has not acted alone: he has had the support of many people, “an audience” (Line 41) who not only excuses his crimes but actively encourages them by “clap[ping] / until the bones begin to rattle” (Lines 42-43). This mention of rattling bones returns readers to the mass graveyard where the unnamed woman now has her full bag of bones, which, in a horrible twist of irony is actually lucky, “unlike her disappointed neighbor / who has not yet found her own” (Lines 46-47).