And Yet Chapter 46: 2022 Summary and Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The poem "2022" opens with the speaker using cosmetic imagery—"we wear our troubles like a rouge"—to describe how people carry emotional burdens in colors that evoke decay: petrifying plum, rotten red, and sickening salmon. A brief, hollow exchange follows: friends ask each other if they are okay, and the automatic reply is "oh yes, oh yes, it's been a year." The year is likened to a distorted version of Groundhog Day, where days stretch into years and years become bees, with a twist that Bill Murray “was the kind of man who'd never play piano.” The speaker then turns to physical actions—dipping a finger into a lake and running a hand through sand and weeds—before listing a series of resigned predictions: “I guess we'll garden / I guess we'll perish / I guess we'll walk down to the quarry / until the whole world / is finally painted red.” The poem ends with this stark vision of a world saturated in red, suggesting both violence and finality.
Key Events
- The speaker introduces the metaphor of wearing troubles as rouge in shades of rotten fruit and sickening salmon.
- A dialogue exchange occurs where friends ask each other “are you okay?” and receive a perfunctory, hollow affirmation.
- The speaker compares the passing of time to Groundhog Day extended into years, with years as bees and Bill Murray as a non-piano player.
- The speaker performs simple, sensory actions: dipping a finger into a lake and running a hand through sand and weeds.
- The speaker lists three future actions—gardening, perishing, and walking to a quarry—culminating in the world being painted red.
Character Development
The speaker (a first-person plural persona) expresses emotional exhaustion and a sense of inevitability. They do not undergo change within the poem; instead, the poem captures a static condition of weariness. The collective “we” includes friends who participate in an automatic social ritual of denying trouble. Bill Murray is referenced as a cultural symbol, not a developed character, but his modified role (never playing piano) underscores the distortion of normalcy.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Wear Troubles as Makeup: The act of wearing troubles like rouge suggests performance, concealment, and the artificial beautification of pain. The colors—plum, rotten red, salmon—evoke decay and sickness rather than vitality.
- Cyclical Time: The Groundhog Day analogy, extended to days that become years and years that become bees, implies an endless, repetitive, and disorienting passage of time. The reference to Bill Murray, who never plays piano, breaks the familiar narrative of the film, signaling that the expected comfort loop is broken.
- Resignation: The “I guess” structure in the final lines conveys a passive acceptance of future actions—gardening (nurturing), perishing (death), and walking to the quarry (potential violence or escape). The speaker does not resist; they simply narrate what will happen.
- Nature and Destruction: The lake, sand, and weeds are natural elements that the speaker touches, grounding the poem in a physical world. The final image of the whole world “painted red” uses red both as a color of life (rouge, blood) and of obliteration (fire, violence), blending creation and destruction.
Why This Chapter Matters
“2022” functions as a powerful snapshot of collective emotional exhaustion, likely reflecting the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and its prolonged disruptions. The poem’s tone of resigned endurance, coupled with its final image of world painted red, marks a turning point in the collection from coping mechanisms (gardening, superficial conversations) toward an acknowledgment of inevitable decline. It challenges the reader to sit with discomfort rather than seek immediate resolution.
Study Questions
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How does the color imagery (rouge, plum, rotten red, salmon, red) function across the poem?
The colors shift from the artificial beauty of rouge to the decay of plum and rotten red, then to the sickening yellow-pink of salmon, and finally to a universal red. This progression mirrors the deterioration of pretense: an initial attempt to make troubles look attractive collapses into raw, unavoidable destruction. Red becomes the final, all-encompassing stain. -
What is the significance of the Groundhog Day reference with Bill Murray?
In the film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character repeats the same day until he learns to improve himself and ultimately plays piano. By imagining Murray as someone who “never play[s] piano,” Baer rejects the possibility of growth or redemption within the cycle. The loop offers no progression, only endless repetition without reward. -
Interpret the final lines: “I guess we'll garden / I guess we'll perish / I guess we'll walk down to the quarry / until the whole world / is finally painted red.” What do these actions suggest about the speaker's outlook?
The three actions—gardening, perishing, walking to the quarry—represent contrasting impulses: nurturing, dying, and seeking a site of extraction or danger. The quarry likely evokes a place of work, death, or violence. The speaker presents these as inevitable (“I guess”) rather than chosen, suggesting a fatalistic acceptance that all human efforts (garden, quarry) lead to the same red end. The red may signify blood, sunset, or fire, but the overall outlook is one of grim resignation.