Depiction of an Innocent Spring to Mask The Murderous Void in Down in The Valley by Joshua Mehigan

The free-verse poem, “Down in the Valley”, written by Joshua Mehigan presents the return home of a college student. The poem’s speaker describes in minimal phrasing, as if to recall only the essential details, the young girl’s past and present experiences. The narration, although bare to begin with, continues through the turn of the poem evoking several seemingly peaceful symbolic images to accompany the dramatic atmosphere, yet it still defies any attempt at a clear account of events. By the final lines, the poem ends with two convoluted sing song verses that leave the reader questioning the girl’s dark situation. This lack of elaboration nevertheless does not inhibit the reader’s comprehension to grasp her murder but achieves a sort of sinister emptiness in the poem’s mood. The author presents the ominous irony between the innocence of spring and the passing of a traumatic or violent event through the use of symbolism of the images presented, personification, alliteration and selective rhyme pattern.

As the beginning of the poem describes the unfortunate circumstances that allow the young girl to fall victim to “the worst thing that can happen” during the Christmas season, the fourth line sets about illustrating a seemingly peaceful return of spring. The irony in this is that it serves as a distraction or temporary release from the tragic news of the murder that the reader is given at the end of the poem. The season of spring follows the dark time of winter, often bringing with it a renewed sense of warmth to one’s life. The symbolism of the plants presented seems to demonstrate this at first. Snowdrops are white drooping flowers that are the first to bloom after winter and because of this, often symbolise feelings of hope and rebirth, as well as innocence because of their white colour. The image of the young “sapling pine trees” supports this symbolism of innocence, as well as the overall embodiment of spring. The important contrast between such pure descriptions of the foliage arises in the final two lines when these symbols change with the dark turn of the poem. This could have also been suspected by the fact that the snowdrop flower, beautiful at first glance, is extremely poisonous to humans, thus it embodies how unassuming the depictions of nature are but how they mask a much more sinister reality. The flowers’ end lines of the poem contribute to this eeriness as they remain slightly spirited in tone, because of the rhyme, even when revealing a murder. They also add to the contrast by almost mockingly reminding everyone of the horrific scene yet in such a childlike way.

The personification of the blossoming springtime flowers is essential to the irony of the poem. The snowdrops are described as forming a self-assured or “poised choir on the verge of singing” which appears to sing the closing two lines of the poem, as indicated by the colon punctuation. The overarching impression imposed by the flowers is one of a comforting nature, almost a happy feeling about the return of spring, but this is contrary to the true nature of their ‘song’ which turns foul in motivation because of the implied murder. The final and most ominous line of the poem; “The worst thing that can happen happened here” is effective in drawing the reader's attention to the last line because of the consonant alliteration. The “worst thing” indicates what has become of the girl; murder, as that is the greatest offense one can commit. This figurative language reinforces the sing-song tone of the flowers’ final chilling lines as the environment of the crime scene rebuilds itself and returns to how it was.

The selective rhyme scheme, in which there is none until the last two lines of the poem, serves to enforce the sing-song effect of the flowers’ lines because they are both perfect end rhymes. This gives the impression that the rest of the poem is missing something, serving as foreshadowing that there will not be many telltale signs of the girl’s tragic murder, but it ends with perfection implied by the flowers that everything has settled and will return to normal as nothing of the sort will happen again. The free-verse structure also allows for such brief and unharmonious sentences, as they lack rhymes, in the beginning of the poem in order to only reveal necessary information and give the impression that the speaker does not want to go into further detail, perhaps in an attempt to distance themselves from what they have done. Then again, the fact that the narrator, suspected to be the perpetrator or an accomplice, in a sense, begins by stalking the college girl and includes intimate details of how she was returning home and had a girlfriend insinuates that they knew quite well the impact of what they were doing to her and still felt comfortable with themselves. This is also in line with the effect of the scarce narration in that there are no details of the murder, only the revival of spring in the clearing. There is something to be said about this narration of the murder as it lacks violent details or any information of the crime at all, any gory possibilities are left up to the imagination of the reader who must interpret and ‘fill’ this sort of hole or gap it created.

The narrator and murderer of the poem effectively uses irony to contrast between the peaceful rebirth of spring and the frightening truth of the murder to avoid any details for a more impactful narration. The symbolism and personification of the snowdrops illustrates such a distraction until the end lines in which the mystery is unveiled through a disturbingly perfect rhyme. A final use of alliteration acts to reinforce the flowers’ sing-song and leave the reader with the terrifying realisation of a young girl’s murder and nature’s dismissive act to simply reclaim the clearing.