Point of View

"The Vine" is written in the first person perspective. Often, this serves to make readers feel closer to the story that is being told. However, "The Vine" features a somewhat unusual use of first person point of view, as the main character himself transforms for most of the poem. The first person pronoun “I” is used throughout the whole poem, both during the few framing lines at the beginning and the end, when he is in bed falling asleep and when he wakes to reflect on his fantasy, but the “I” is not always quite the same person. For most of the poem, the “I” is not really a person at all, but a vine that exists only in that person’s imagination. The action is therefore still somewhat separated from the speaker, who appears most fully at the beginning and end of the poem...