The Kite Symbol in American Melancholy: Ambition and Vulnerability

What Is the Kite in American Melancholy?

The kite appears in Chapter 22, “Kite Poem,” a short lyric dedicated to Billy Collins. Literally, the poem describes two kinds of kites: one that soars triumphantly above rooftops and treetops, and two that fail—a kite whose tail is tattered in a TV antenna and a kite that rises thrillingly at dawn then crashes vertically at the observer's feet. The kite is a physical object made of fabric and string, lifted by wind, but the poem treats it as a vehicle for a larger idea about the American character.

Where Does the Kite Recur?

Within the supplied evidence, the kite appears only in Chapter 22. However, its symbolic logic echoes across other poems that address aspiration and collapse. For instance, Chapter 2 (“In Hemp-Woven Hammocks Reading the Nation”) depicts a serene scene of intellectual leisure shadowed by uncertainty about whether the earth will turn again—a similar tension between upward hope and the risk of falling. Chapter 31 (“Palliative”) traces a physical decline from life to death, where the speaker's husband speaks of being taken to the crematorium, a kind of crash from existence. The kite’s arc of rise and sudden fall also resonates with Chapter 7 (“Loney”), where a man’s spirit is trapped like a genie in a Coke bottle, and Chapter 30 (“The Tunnel”), where a speaker descends into a hospital toward a dying figure. The kite is not physically present in those chapters, but the pattern of soaring then failing recurs as a structural motif across the collection.

How Does Its Meaning Change?

The poem presents a clear opposition: the American soul soars with kites that soar, but cannot adore the kite that fails to soar. The meaning of the kite thus splits into two symbolic poles:

The soaring kite represents ambition, success, the national appetite for triumph. The language is energetic: “soars,” “roar of the wind lifting,” “awestruck heads.”
The failing kite embodies disappointment, collapse, and what the poem calls a “Something … not in the American soul to adore.” The failures are specific: a kite tangled in a TV antenna (an image of entanglement with mass media or modern infrastructure) and a kite that rises then crashes vertically at the observer’s feet (a sudden, humiliating descent).

The meaning does not change across the poem because the poem is short and static; rather, the two meanings coexist as a binary that the poem refuses to resolve. The “And yet—” pivot signals a discomfort, a recognition that the national psyche selectively celebrates triumph while rejecting evidence of failure. The kite thus functions as a mirror: it shows what Americans want to see (soaring) and what they avert their eyes from (crashing).

Character and Theme Connections

Characters:

The poem is “for Billy Collins,” a former U.S. Poet Laureate whose own work often blends wit and melancholy. The dedication suggests a dialogue between poets about the public role of poetry and the national mood.
The observer at whose feet the kite crashes is unnamed, but that observer stands in for any reader or citizen—passive, receiving the wreckage without having caused it.
Other characters in the collection, such as the interpreter in “American Sign Language” (Chapter 23), who breaks down while signing a poem about police violence, or the speaker in “Palliative” (Chapter 31) watching her husband die, also occupy the position of witnesses to failure. The kite’s crash at the observer’s feet connects the symbolic crash to the act of bearing witness that many poems in the book enact.

Themes:

Ambition and vulnerability are the poem’s central concerns. The kite is an allegory for the American dream and its flip side—the failure that is often hidden or disowned.
Violence and complicity appear implicitly: the kite that tangles in a TV antenna is a small violence done to the object by a man-made structure. The crash at dawn, meanwhile, suggests a fall from grace.
Art as witness and response is embodied by the poem itself. Oates does not celebrate or condemn the kite’s failure; she simply records it, forcing the reader to sit with the uncomfortable “heap.”
Memory and forgetting also connect: the “Something … not in the American soul to adore” implies a willed forgetting of failure, a cultural amnesia. The poem counteracts that by making the failed kite visible.
Mortality and physical decay resonate with the vertical crash—a sudden stop, analogous to death. The poem’s clipped lines and enjambments mimic the breathlessness of a fall.

4 Study Questions with Answers

1. How does the poem’s visual shape on the page reinforce its meaning?

Each line is short and staggered, with words like “Some- / thing” and “soars” isolated. The indentations create a sawtooth pattern that imitates a kite’s zigzag flight. The final stanza, describing the crash, uses the shortest lines— “then crashes / vertically / at your feet / in a heap”—which visually pile up like the fallen kite. The shape mirrors ascent and sudden stop, making the reader experience the drop through lineation.

2. What does the TV antenna signify in the context of the poem’s critique of American culture?

The TV antenna is a specifically modern, domestic obstacle. It suggests that the infrastructure of mass media and consumer technology entangles ambition. The kite’s tail getting “tattered” implies that American striving becomes caught in the very systems (television, advertising, spectacle) that promise success. The antenna also ties to the theme of complicity: the observer’s own household object participates in the kite’s failure.

3. Compare the kite’s crash in “Kite Poem” to the description of death in “Palliative.” What formal or thematic parallels can you draw?

In “Palliative,” the speaker’s husband dies with “the deepest sigh / of a lifetime” and is imagined as “unrippled dark water” with a cold moon. In “Kite Poem,” the kite “crashes / vertically / at your feet / in a heap.” Both endings involve a cessation of motion—one gentle, one abrupt. Thematically, both depict a transition from movement to stillness. However, “Palliative” offers posthumous peace (“unrippled dark water”), while “Kite Poem” offers only a heap, no consolation. The difference highlights the kite’s role as an emblem of public failure, not private loss.

4. Why might Joyce Carol Oates dedicate this poem to Billy Collins, and what does that choice tell us about the poem’s intended audience?

Billy Collins served as U.S. Poet Laureate (2001–2003) and is known for accessible, often humorous poems that frequently explore ordinary experience. By dedicating the poem to him, Oates signals that “Kite Poem” is a meditation on the American soul meant for a broad readership, not an academic one. Collins’ own poem “The Kite” (from The Apple That Astonished Paris) also uses a kite as a metaphor for childhood and memory. The dedication may be an intertextual nod, suggesting that Oates is reframing the kite as a national symbol rather than a personal one.

Conclusion

The kite in American Melancholy is a concentrated emblem of the book’s preoccupation with fragile ambition. It soars only to fall, and the American soul—celebratory of success—cannot face the wreckage. Through its formal shape, its dedication, and its position in the collection, the kite connects to themes of witness, violence, forgetting, and mortality. It challenges readers to sit with the heap, to acknowledge the failure that lies beneath the national desire to soar.

For further reading, explore the book's home page, or examine related themes such as memory and forgetting, violence and complicity, and art as witness and response. Characters like the Interpreter and Joyce the speaker in “Palliative” also embody the role of witness that the kite poem demands of its reader.