The Son in Maggie Smith's Goldenrod: A Character Analysis

Overview

The Son in Maggie Smith’s poetry collection Goldenrod is the speaker’s younger child, never named, who appears across several poems as a catalyst for meditations on vulnerability, parental love, loss, and resilience. Unlike a traditional narrative character, he emerges through fragmented, image-driven moments: his pockets yield acorns and stones, his fevers blur language into “not-consonants,” his body bruises like a field of flowers. These details are not simple autobiography but crafted elements that serve the collection’s central concerns—how we survive after fracture and how ordinary objects can become vessels for profound emotion.

Plot Role

The Son does not drive a plot; his presence triggers the speaker’s inner shifts. In “Not Everything Is a Poem,” the act of emptying his pockets before doing laundry leads the speaker to question whether poetry can contain her son’s suffering. In “Confession,” his dangerous fever softens her toward faith. In “Talisman,” his pocket-treasures left for her become a protective charm she carries. His illness marks a before-and-after in the collection: a poem explicitly states “two springs ago, my son was so ill,” and later poems show him healthy again, his pockets full of petals and stones. The Son therefore functions as a living symbol of what the speaker loves and fears to lose.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

The Son’s motivations are inferred from his actions, as the poems give his perspective only through the speaker’s observation.

Curiosity and connection to the natural world: He collects ordinary outdoor objects—an acorn, rocks, a chunk of mulch, a wilted dandelion. In “Talisman,” his mother finds a scuffed acorn, a glassy black stone, and a pink Mr. Potato Head ear in her coat pocket. These acts show a child exploring his environment, seeing value in what adults might discard.
Vulnerability and dependence: During his illness, he “woke shitting blood, saying my name, my name, my name.” His fever reduces him to a “strange new language of not-consonants and not-vowels.” The speaker must “mitten his hands and sock his feet with cold washcloths,” lift him “guitar-slung” and sway. These actions reveal his helplessness and his reliance on his mother for comfort and survival.
Affection expressed through giving: The speaker interprets the objects he leaves as “gifts a crow might bring a human girl, desperate to impress her.” She says “it’s my son who shows his love like a creature that clever, leaving treasures for my fingers to worry against.” This suggests an unspoken, generous nature.
Resilience: He survives the illness. “It’s spring again and he lives.” His return to collecting pocket items—petals and stones—signals his recovery and ongoing vitality.

Chronological Arc

The poems do not present a linear biography, but a plausible sequence can be reconstructed:

Early infancy: In “First Thaw,” the speaker bundles the son to her chest and steps outside under an umbrella. He is “new as you are” and she teaches him the world—a room without walls. This suggests he was a baby learning about rain and birds.
Early childhood, healthy: “Not Everything Is a Poem” shows him running through a weedy lawn, letting crabgrass saw his ankles. His pockets hold nature’s castoffs. His sister’s namesake flowers (violets) are spared when killing weeds would harm them.
Severe illness: In “Not Everything Is a Poem,” the speaker recalls “two springs ago” he was ill, with a bad-sweet smell and shitting blood. “Confession” portrays the fever that “sizzles” him and the speaker’s night-time care. His body bruises purple fading to green—his skin compared to a field of flowers.
Recovery: The same poem ends with “It’s spring again and he lives. / It’s spring again and his pockets / are full of petals and stones.”
Post-illness childhood: “Talisman” shows him still collecting items and leaving them for his mother. She walks alone at night, touching the objects, telling herself a story that might end well.

This arc moves from innocence through crisis to restored normalcy, though the speaker remains marked by the fear of loss.

Relationships

With the mother-speaker: This is the central relationship. The son’s illness forces the mother to confront mortality and her own helplessness. In “Confession,” she tries to visualize being held by a divine hand while physically holding her son; her arms tremble with his weight. She feels “terror” and recognizes that “need alchemizes into belief.” After his recovery, she carries his objects as talismans, using them to believe “almost anything.” Her love is protective yet aware of its limits—no poem kept his body from bruising.

With his sister: The daughter is mentioned in “Not Everything Is a Poem.” The speaker refuses to kill crabgrass because doing so would also kill “the wild violets, his sister’s namesakes.” This implies a sibling bond surrounding shared play in the yard. Poems like “At the End of Our Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees” show the daughter offering her own perspectives, but the son’s relationship with her is not directly described.

With the father: The father appears only in the background of poems about the marriage’s end. In “At the End of Our Marriage, in the Backyard,” the parents let the lawn go wild while the children must wear shoes near the bees. The son is present but the poem focuses on the couple’s inaction. After the divorce, the son is not mentioned in poems about the daughter’s comments on Mars or trees, so his relationship with the father is absent from the evidence.

Key Decisions and Consequences

The son makes few conscious decisions; most key actions belong to the speaker. However, his decision to collect and deposit objects in his mother’s coat pocket (a deliberate act implied by “it’s my son who shows his love like a creature that clever”) creates a consequence for her: she gains a tangible focus for hope and safety. “Who’s to say they can’t keep me safe?” she asks. She touches them when walking alone at night, telling herself a story that might end well. His illness is not a choice, but the mother’s decision to nurse him through it—lifting him, wiping his face, holding him—deepens her entanglement with faith and her awareness of life’s fragility.

Theme and Symbol Connections

The Son connects to several of Goldenrod’s major themes:

Vulnerability and survival: His illness embodies the fragility of life. The poem “Not Everything Is a Poem” explicitly states “no poem kept his body from bruising purple that would fade to green.” Yet he survives, and the repetition of “he lives” underscores resilience. This ties directly to the theme of survival and resilience after loss.
Motherhood and parental love: The intimate, physical care the speaker provides—mittening his hands, holding him across her body, wiping his chest—demonstrates the depths of maternal love. She questions her own softness, calling “poem” suspicious because it is “mother-soft.” This aligns with the theme of motherhood and parental love.
Memory and the past: The son’s illness is recalled two springs later, and the pocket objects carry memory. The speaker carries his “treasures” like anything she loves, until they warm in her palm. Memory is tactile here. See memory and the past.
Nature as mirror and metaphor: His pocket items (acorn, stone, dandelion, petals) are fragments of the natural world. His bruised skin is described as a “field of flowers.” Nature reflects his state: the lawn they let go wild, the violets that are his sister’s namesakes. This connects to nature as mirror and metaphor.
Language, naming, and perception: In his fever, he speaks a language that is not language—syntax burned black. The speaker questions whether poetry can hold such reality. The son himself never says a complete sentence in the poems; his “name, my name, my name” is a primal cry. This theme is explored in language, naming, and perception.
Talismans and belief: The son’s objects function as talismans, connecting to the poem of the same name. The speaker uses them to believe that a story might end well. This echoes the collection’s epigraph from Forrest Gander about outliving one’s life, and the question of how we continue after trauma.

5 Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. What specific illness does the son suffer from in “Not Everything Is a Poem”?
The poem does not name a disease. It describes him as “so ill, he smelled bad-sweet,” and “one morning he woke shitting blood.” The symptoms suggest a severe gastrointestinal infection or inflammatory condition, but the text deliberately leaves the diagnosis ambiguous to focus on the mother’s experience of terror and care.

2. Why does the speaker empty her son’s pockets in that poem?
She empties his pockets before doing laundry. Among the items are an acorn, two rocks (one smooth and gray, one rough and glittering flecked pink), a chunk of mulch, and a wilted dandelion. She sees these as the raw material of a poem pressing against grit and splinter.

3. How does the son’s fever affect the speaker’s spiritual outlook?
In “Confession,” his terrible fevers soften her “to God. To the idea.” She needs “one golden iteration” she can live with. She tries to visualize being held in a cupped hand while holding her son. The experience transforms need into belief, even as her arms tremble with his weight.

4. What items does the speaker find in her own coat pocket in “Talisman,” and who put them there?
In the left pocket of her thrifted emerald coat she finds a scuffed acorn, a glassy black stone, and one pink Mr. Potato Head ear. She says it is her son who shows his love like a clever creature, leaving treasures for her fingers to worry against.

5. How does the son’s survival change the speaker’s perspective in later poems?
After his recovery, the speaker carries his objects as talismans, using them to believe “almost anything.” She walks alone at night telling herself a story that might end well. The son’s survival becomes proof that life can continue after crisis, and the ordinary—petals, stones—is suffused with meaning and protection.

For a deeper look at the collection’s ending and what it means for the speaker and her children, read the ending explained and questions and answers pages.