Point of View

“The Dead” is told from fourth-person point of view, sometimes called first-person plural, which uses the pronouns “we” and “us” to represent a collective. This is an uncommon narrative technique that creates a speaker who is not an individual, but a wider group characterised by a unifying thread like class, race, belief system, or identity. In this instance, the speaker represents the entire landscape of the living juxtaposed against the equally broad landscape of the dead. This gives the poem a universality and a resonance with all readers. By choosing this perspective over the more conventional first person, the poem becomes not a philosophical musing of a singular character but a widespread truth that is bigger than the individual.

Language and Meaning

This poem is laid out in very simple, clear language using the everyday vernacular common among Billy Collins’ poetry canon. Key words like...