The Blind Men and the Elephant

Instead of cryptic or challenging verse lines, Saxe delivers a clear, clean line of purpose. The poem is based on an ancient parable, therefore Saxe plays the role of poet-teacher, and the reader is the student.

Saxe published this poem during America’s Gilded Age—relentless in its pursuit of bigger and better, pushed by the can-do spirit of a nation/culture just beginning to emerge into its majority. At that time, poets held a treasured and valued public role: to give the nation its conscience. The Fireside Poets sought to make clear the function and purpose of individuals within a society, and Saxe embraced that template. Saxe’s poem is a story, the premise of which is contrived—no reason is given for why six blind men need to understand what an elephant is—and these men are not characters, that is, three-dimensional constructs with individual, signature psychologies, and complex motivations. Rather the poem unfolds with clear predictability: The blind men cannot see what is right in front of them; the blind men are too-content with pretending their limited perception is a valid truth; and the blind men refuse to communicate and share, each too intent on their own limited perception.

When the poet steps into the poem in the closing stanza, the function is to remove an interpretative license, not to discourage creative interaction with the poem but to dispense with that function.