The Whip by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The poem addresses a dead man whose long struggle against doubt, cynicism, tyranny, wrong, and ruin has ended in the coffin and grave. The speaker reflects on those left behind—the mistress, the slave, and the lover—and says the man abandoned two of them to make their own way toward destruction before choosing to plunge into the river himself. Questioning whether his death was justified, the speaker cannot determine whether others would have acted as he did. At the funeral, a blue mark on the dead man’s face raises a disturbing question: although the woman may have dealt the decisive blow, he had already seen the river and still chose to sink.
By Edwin Arlington Robinson · First published 1916 · Genre: Poetry, Dramatic Monologue, Elegy · 298 words
First lines
THE DOUBT you fought so long
The cynic net you cast, / The tyranny, the wrong, / The ruin, they are past; / And here you are at last,
Your blood no longer vexed.
The coffin has you fast, / The clod will have you next.
What this Textopian page supports
The Whip is listed on Textopian as a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, dated 1916 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Date: 1916 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Poetry, Dramatic Monologue, Elegy, Tragic Poetry, Psychological Poetry
- Length: 298 words
- Structure: 1 section, 30 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)
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Genres
- Poetry — The work is a structured lyric poem using rhyme, meter, compressed imagery, and a speaking voice rather than prose narration.
- Dramatic Monologue — An unidentified speaker directly addresses a dead person, reconstructing that person's motives and fate through accusatory, speculative speech.
- Elegy — The poem centers on death, burial, remembrance, and the unresolved meaning of a person's apparent suicide.
- Tragic Poetry — Its subject is an irreversible personal catastrophe involving emotional torment, betrayal, death, and uncertainty about culpability.
Tags
poetry · American literature · early twentieth-century literature · lyric poem · psychological conflict · moral struggle · guilt · despair · isolation · human suffering · inner turmoil · symbolism