LitCharts The Enemies
LitCharts The Enemies
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The Enemies
friends alike all become "enemies" to each other, transformed
SUMMARY by fear.
The poem's speaker describes a mysterious band of people who Readers might take this story literally, as a tale about the
crossed a river to arrive in a city. The women of the city were difficulty of truly welcoming people whom one sees as
awake and ready to welcome the new arrivals, offering them outsiders, somehow different from oneself. But one can also
food and asking them no questions about what they wanted, read the poem as an allegory of how hard it is to face any kind
what language they spoke, or why they had arrived out of of novelty and change. The citizens' fretful, withdrawn
nowhere like this. response to the strangers suggests that anything new,
different, and unknown might inspire anxiety. Though the city is
But now it's the following morning, the speaker says, and the
willing enough to accept the strangers at first, their nerve fails
whole city is full of tales about the sudden invasion that
quickly—and this, the poem hints, might be a common human
happened last night. The women who welcomed the strangers
problem.
now point out that they still haven't explained why they're here.
Clearly, however, the strangers didn't come to destroy the city;
everything is still peaceful. Where this theme appears in the poem:
Nevertheless, the city is on edge. People, even old friends, talk • Lines 1-20
to each other guardedly, hide their expressions, and greet each
other without kindness. Everyone has the same thoughts: "I'd
better hide myself, in case the strangers have put new ideas LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS
into the minds of my friends, where I used to feel so at home. I'd
better close off my own mind, even if the strangers are already LINES 1-6
in there with me."
Last night they ...
... through the land.
THEMES "The Enemies" begins with a mysterious arrival. "Last night," the
speaker reports, a crowd of unknown people "came across the
river and / Entered the city." The language here flings readers
THE FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN right into the middle of the action. The speaker doesn't even
In "The Enemies," change and strangeness destabilize feel the need to say what city this is: it's just "the city." It's as if
a whole city. As the poem begins, a group of unknown the readers, too, are citizens, listening to the gossip about what
people arrives in a nameless city. They meet with a warm happened the night before.
welcome—at first. The "women" of the town greet them "with As the speaker tells it, the "women" of the city welcomed the
lights and food," hosting them unquestioningly. The strangers new arrivals with open arms, bringing "lights and food,"
are treated as guests: no one asks them any questions about unhesitatingly hosting the strangers. No one asked "what
their language, their reasons for coming, or what they might strange tongue [the strangers] spoke" or "why they came so
want. But this unquestioning welcome lasts only one night. The suddenly" to the city; they just offered instinctive hospitality.
next day, the citizens are nervous, as untrusting of each other But the fact that the speaker remarks on that hospitality
as they are of the new arrivals. Although "peace is apparent suggests that there's something unusual about such openness.
still"—that the strangers clearly mean no harm and aren't here Among the many questions the women did not ask, the speaker
to cause trouble—the citizens grow anxious and wary. Even old notes, is "what the men had come to take"—not the sort of
friends find that there is "no warmth" when they greet each question one would even dream of asking a welcome guest.
other now. The mere fact that unknown people have arrived in
town, in other words, puts the whole city on its guard. The In this moment of kindness, then, there's a hint of trouble to
jittery citizens draw a sharp line between them and us, treating come. The city has welcomed the strangers for now, but they
the strangers as outsiders simply because they're new to town. might not stay so friendly. Even the poem's rhythms suggest a
certain tension. Listen to the halting enjambments in lines 1-3,
They even become worried that the strangers have somehow for instance:
invaded their very minds, "haunt[ing]" then in their own internal
"house[s]"—in other words, that the presence of the strangers Last night they came across the river and
has changed them and everyone they know. Strangers and old Entered the city. Women were awak
wakee
RHYME SCHEME
FORM, METER, & RHYME
In the first two stanzas of "The Enemies," the rh
rhyme
yme scheme
FORM runs as follows:
The 20 lines of "The Enemies" are divided into three stanzas of ABABBA CDCDDC