Who Understands Me but Me

“Who Understands Me but Me” is a poem about isolation and the way the speaker learns to relate to his innermost self when everyone in the outer world seems to be against him. The title suggests that the main theme is this relationship between parts of the self and the quest toward greater self-understanding.

The speaker uses the pronouns “I” and “they” to differentiate between the self and everything else. The “they” of the poem may imply the prison guards, specifically, but “they” may also refer to anyone who has control over the speaker or to society in general. They continue to take from the speaker and tell him he is “beastly” (Line 8). They lock him away and force him into isolation.

The speaker acknowledges there are others in the world, yet the way “they” (Line 14) treat him prevents him from connecting with those others. He writes, “they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends” (Line 8), which implies that the speaker believes the negative things others tell him. This negative self-belief prevents him from making friends. He emphasizes this isolation again, saying, “they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers” (Line 14).