The Roofwalker - Adrienne Rich

For Denise Levertov

Over the half finished houses
night comes. The builders
stand on the roof. It is
quiet after the hammers,
the pulleys hang slack.
Giants, the roofwalkers,
on a listing deck, the wave
of darkness about to break
on their heads. The sky
is a torn sail where figures
pass magnified, shadows
on a burning deck.

I feel like them up there:
exposed, larger than life,
and due to break my neck.

Was it worth while to lay -
with infinite exertion -
a roof I can't live under?
- All those blueprints,
closings of gaps
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn't choose
chose me: even
my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do.
I'm naked, ignorant,
a naked man fleeing
across the roofs
who could with a shade of difference
be sitting in the lamplight
against the cream wallpaper
reading - not with indifference -
about a naked man
fleeing across the roofs.



This poem is about Adrienne Rich's struggle to be recognised as an equal in her life. Rich uses everyday words to highlight the issues she wants to talk about and this poem is no exception. In The Roofwalker, she talks about her struggle to live her life the way she wants to. She uses the every day scene of a building site to do this.

The poem begins with dark and silent imagery,
"Over the half finished houses
night comes."
"It is silent"
Night time is seen as dark, which is also seen as negative, so the reader knows that the tone of the poem will be negative.


The silence of the pulleys hanging 'slack' is described as a calming before the imminent storm. We get the sense that something is about to happen and the mood is tense in this first stanza. The deck they are standing on is 'listing' and 'burning'. Something is about to happen. Rich tells us that darkness is "about to break on their heads." What does she mean?

Rich is saying to us that she is getting ready to fight back at the roofwalkers. She is going to get up, high up onto that roof too and fight them for her freedom.

"Giants, the roofwalkers". Adrienne Rich describes these roofwalkers as Giants. This represents the great poets of the time. Rich calls them roofwalkers as they are raised high above society, looking down on everyone else. However, by calling them 'Giants' we realise that Rich has a great deal of respect for these men. These 'Giants' are who originally inspired her and she is respectful of them for that.

Rich says:
"I feel like them up there"
The poet feels that she too deserves to be given high status as a poet. However, she feels that because she is a woman, she is not getting it. She knows that her attempts to challenge society and demand equal status for female poets is dangerous as she says she is "due to break my neck"

Rich begins to wonder about her own life in the third stanza of this poem. She thinks about whether or not she wasted her time making "a roof I can't live under". This roof that she can't live under is the roof she shares with her husband and sons. Rich was not the excellent mother and devoted wife that her own mother was. Rich struggled to adapt to family life, and longed to be doing activist work within society.

She looks back on the wasted time she has spent trying to be someone she is not
"All those blueprints,
closings of gaps
measurings, calculations?"

The poet then concludes that the problem is that she was given the wrong life,
"A life I didn't choose
chose me:"
Rich did not choose to be a poet, but this life seemed to choose her. The reader gets the impression that Rich is saying that a male's life would have suited her better. She does not have the tools she needs for her life. This is a reference to her life as a poet and also is a link to her sexuality.

This is also evident in the mention of the
"naked man
fleeing across the roofs."
Rich describes herself as a naked man. Naked because she is exposing her personal life by writing this poem. A man because she would fit into society better as a man in terms of her vocation and sexuality.