The Mill

“The Mill” by Edwin Arlington Robinson is an ominous poem written about the negative side of the Industrial Revolution. Many of the jobs done by hand could now be done by machinery. Thus, many were laid off. That is exactly what happened to the miller in this story. The miller’s wife waited a long time for him to come home, just so that he could say, “There are no more millers any more” (The American Tradition in Literature 834). The miller’s wife sat staring for a long time before she left the house. She went to the mill and saw her husband hanging from a beam. He had committed suicide. She kept walking and threw herself into the water, committing suicide as well. The last phrases in the stanza suggest that the deaths and disappearances of these workers during the Industrial Revolution time period would not affect society in the least. “Though ruffled once, would soon appear

The same as ever to the sight” (The American Tradition in Literature 835).

This is a very depressing story line. The entirety of the poem gives a gloomy tone and invokes an eerie feeling in the reader in order to reflect the sad lives of these people. Robinson creates this tone in a few ways.

The first way that this feeling is invoked is the simple way in which he wrote the words; there is simplicity in his writing. It has a “seemingly uncaring” and matter-of-fact tone. These next few quotes show the author’s matter-of-fact tone:

“And what was hanging from a beam

Would not have heeded where she went” (The American Tradition in Literature 835).

“The miller’s wife had waited long,

The tea was cold, the fire dead…” (The American Tradition in Literature 834).

One reason the simplicity is so successful is because it is horrid without embellishments. Suicide is not usually talked about simply – the writing is ironic. Robinson wrote with this irony to create a stir in the reader. The tone does not match the building climax. In other words, readers would most likely not expect that the characters were a stanza away from suicide.

The next thing he does to create the gloomy feeling of the present is contrast it with the past.

“And in the mill there was a warm

And mealy fragrance of the past” (The American Tradition in Literature 834).

The words “warm” and “mealy” invoke a healthy and lively feeling in the reader that greatly contrast words such as “cold”, “dead”, and “black”. It gives a positive feeling of the past, making the present seem that much worse.

These same words hold much symbolism in the poem. For example, the “cold tea”, “dead fire”, and “black water” symbolize death.

Robinson’s morbid tone, grim diction, cold imagery, irony, and symbolism are a reflection of the lost lives in the Industrial Revolution.