18 pages • 36 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopThe Armadillo
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
A Sense of Place
Bishop creates a strong sense of place by developing descriptions of a local festival, as well as the local flora and fauna (plants and animals). The festival, Festa Junina (June Festival), celebrates saints, such as St. John the Baptist (See: Background). This saint is “still honored in these parts” (Line 6). The location—“these parts”—is central to the poem. The poem was originally published in The New Yorker, which is a magazine from North America. Bishop gives North American readers a glimpse into life in South America, specifically Brazil. The festival includes daily fireworks, and Bishop focuses on “illegal fire balloons” (Line 3) used throughout the month of June. These have an impact on the local wildlife.
In addition to human inhabitants of Brazil celebrating St. John, Bishop describes the local plant and animal life, including the titular armadillo. The sense of place is developed through geographical features, such as “mountain height” (Line 4) and “cliff behind the house” (Line 23). The mountain is home to several different kinds of animals, including owls, armadillos, and rabbits. The adjective used to describe the owls—“ancient” (Line 29)—can be contrasted with the adjective used to describe the rabbit—“baby” (Line 33). The inhabitants of the mountain are young and old and have lived there for many generations. In addition to the diction of “baby,” the multiple generations of animals living on the mountain is indicated by the owl’s “nest” (Line 25). The nest implies that there are trees on the old mountain. Bishop’s descriptions of the human activities and natural world develop the reader’s perception of the “scene” (Line 31) or, in other words, increase the sense of place.
The Interactions Between Humans and Nature
As depicted in the poem, some human celebrations that include fireworks can have negative effects on nature. The fire balloons launched during Festa Junina are “illegal” (Line 3) because they can harm the local flora and fauna. If the fire balloons are caught in a “downdraft from a peak” (Line 19), or a strong downward mountain wind, they can set part of the mountain on fire. The speaker describes how the “ancient owls’ nest must have burned” (Line 29), implying that the nest was located in a tree on the cliff. The homes of owls are destroyed, possibly harming or killing their young. In this sense, the owl’s nest can be compared with the human’s “house” (Line 23) in front of a cliff. The fire balloons generally travel away from human civilization but, if they set trees on fire, the balloons can also harm human homes. Fireworks can begin wildfires that will destroy any home—human or animal—in their path.
The reactions of animals demonstrate the negative effects of the fire balloons on nature. The owls, as their nest is being destroyed, “shrieked” (Line 28). They have to relocate, so they fly away from the area where they have historically raised their young. The titular armadillo also “left the scene” (Line 31). It moves “[h]astily, all alone” (Line 30). In other words, it is separated from others of its kind by the fire. Its posture—“head down, tail down” (Line 32)—implies that it has been beaten down by the destructive fire balloons. The armadillo shows the stress and danger of the celebrations physically through its slouched posture. A “baby rabbit” (Line 33) also flees the scene. The speaker metaphorically links its soft fur with “a handful of intangible ash” (Line 35). This implies that its gray fur resembles gray ashes, another use of fire imagery.
The fire balloon’s negative impact on nature can also be seen in the “piercing cry / and panic” (Lines 38-39) of the animals. They object to what is being done to their mountain but are powerless to stop it. This can be seen in the “weak mailed fist” (Line 39). This fist belongs to the armadillo, and its quality of being “mailed” (mail referring to part of knight’s armor) reflects how the mammal has a shell. The fist is raised “against the sky” (Line 40), or raised against a distant power. The sky is, divinely, the realm of saints, but celebrations of those saints can have an impact on the animals on the earth below.
The Condemnation of Human Violence
The fire balloons can be read as a metaphor for larger acts of human violence that harm the environment. As Lloyd Schwartz argues, the poem is a “Cold War metaphor” (“Dedications,” 2004). In this reading, the fire balloons represent bombs or missiles; the phrase the “big one fell” (Line 21) can refer to a bomb falling. The “big one” has been used to refer to a bomb, specifically the Tsar Bomba, which was built as part of the growing tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union (USSR). In the Cold War arms race, each country had an escalating desire to outpace the other in terms of weapons technology. Bishop’s poem was first published after construction on the Tsar Bomba began. Her book, Questions of Travel, which also included “The Armadillo,” came out after construction on the “big one” was complete.
Other lines in the poem develop the Cold War metaphor. The “egg of fire” (Line 22) is a fire balloon that “splattered” (Line 22), or broke open and ignited plants on the mountain. The egg not only connects to the fire balloons destroying an owl’s nest, but can also be read as a description of a bomb. Bombs hold fire inside them like an egg until they are detonated. In the final stanza, the imagery of fire from the sky is developed. The phrase “O falling fire” (Line 38) begins with an exclamation that is more powerful than oh. The single capitalized “O” (Line 38) is an address, or apostrophe, to a powerful and usually absent being. The falling fire that Bishop invokes through the Cold War metaphor can be compared to the saint who is invoked by the fire balloons—both weapons and saints have power that exceeds the power of regular humans. In that light, the poem’s continued criticism of the “illegal fire balloons” (Line 3) is also a condemnation of human violence.
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