Chapter 5 “At First” 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 opens with the admission that at the start of the pandemic there were no words to describe what people witnessed. Conversations became stilted, like telegrams, with hollow pleasantries like “Hope we are doing well / As we can be.” No one expected an honest answer to “How are you?” because the real question was how to remain alive. People became “paid professionals of pain,” experts at suffering. Time blurred: March shuddered into a year filled with “millions of lonely” and an “overcrowded solitude.” The speaker prays that such a precise and peopled hurt never repeats.
As the pandemic stretched on, words began to be lost — like trees forgetting their leaves in autumn. The language that remained had no place for excited, eager, laughter, joy, friend, or get‑together. The surviving phrases carried their own violence: “That was sicckk! Ha! we’re dead. We are deceased.” The rhetoric of trying became “take a stab” or “take a shot.” The speaker questions what leads a person to commit mass violence except the desire to mark the globe, to be remembered even for wreckage. In contrast, children are taught to “Leave a mark on the world,” but the poem turns that advice upside down: “Kids, unmark this place. / Leave it nothing / Like the one we left behind.” The final lines move toward reunion, letting love reclaim our tongues, and note that “Our hearts have always / Been in our throats.”
Key Events
- The opening wordlessness: The speaker states there were no words for what was witnessed, establishing the central problem of the poem.
- Stilted communication: Conversations became telegram-like, with questions not expecting honest answers.
- Becoming professionals of pain: A shift to describing people as experts in suffering.
- The year of lonely: Time is measured by “millions of lonely” and “overcrowded solitude.”
- Language loss: Words like joy and together disappear; only violent or black-humor phrases remain.
- Critique of violent rhetoric: The poem examines how ordinary language (“take a stab”) mirrors real violence.
- The call to unmark: Children are instructed to “unmark this place” instead of leaving a mark, flipping the usual advice.
- Turn toward reunion: Love reclaims tongues; hearts are in throats, suggesting both anxiety and readiness.
Character Development
The poem does not have named characters; its central “character” is the collective “we” — society enduring the pandemic. This collective voice evolves from a state of speechless grief (stilted, hollow) into a self-aware survivor (“professionals of pain”), then into a critic of its own violent language, and finally into a hopeful agent of change that can “unmark” the world and reclaim love. The only other figure is the implied child who is being taught — first the old lesson of leaving a mark, then the new lesson of unmarking.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Language as loss: The poem treats language like a living organism that sheds words in winter (“as trees forget their leaves in fall”). The absence of positive words reveals how deeply the pandemic wounded everyday speech.
- Violence embedded in rhetoric: Ordinary phrases such as “take a stab” and “we are deceased” are shown to carry the residue of real violence. The motif of “marking” connects personal ambition (“leave a mark”) to mass shootings (shooters wanting to scar the world).
- The tree metaphor: Trees forgetting leaves symbolises the natural, almost seasonal, loss of language — both inevitable and lamentable.
- Color and violence: “A rhetoric that works in red” suggests the language of blood and gunfire, tying speech acts to physical harm.
- Unmarking as hope: The command to “unmark this place” offers a counter‑symbol to the destructive desire to leave a permanent, violent mark. It proposes leaving the world untouched, gentle, and different from the one left behind.
- Hearts in throats: The final image suggests both anxiety (heart in throat from fear) and readiness (to speak love), neatly closing the arc from wordlessness to reclamation.
Why This Chapter Matters
“At First” is a pivotal poem in Call Us What We Carry because it crystallises the emotional and linguistic dislocation of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Gorman gives voice to an experience that many found difficult to articulate: the simultaneous loss of vocabulary, the dark humor that filled its place, and the slow realisation that language can be both weapon and balm. The poem also introduces the ethical challenge of “unmarking” — a concept that reappears throughout the collection as a counter to the impulse to inflict lasting damage on the world. By grounding abstract themes in concrete, bodily images (throats, teeth, leaves), the poem makes the reader feel the weight of each lost word and the hope of reclamation.
Study Questions and Answers
1. What does the line “We became paid professionals of pain” suggest about society’s response to the pandemic?
The line implies that people grew accustomed to suffering and even specialized in it, as if pain became a profession. It critiques the way pandemic life forced everyone to become experts in managing grief, isolation, and anxiety — a grim skill that no one asked for.
2. How does the poet use the image of trees forgetting their leaves to convey the loss of language?
The image compares words to leaves that naturally fall away in autumn, suggesting that language loss is both organic and painful. Just as a bare tree is a sign of winter, a depleted vocabulary signals a season of emotional coldness and death. The metaphor also hints that language, like leaves, may grow back — leaving room for renewal.
3. What is the significance of telling children to “unmark this place” instead of “leave a mark on the world”?
It reverses a common piece of advice: instead of striving to make a lasting, possibly destructive impact, children are asked to leave the world untouched and unspoiled. “Unmarking” becomes an act of humility and healing, opposing the violent desire to scar the world for personal legacy — a theme that connects individual ambition to collective harm.