Pain: Past, Present, and Future in Adrienne Rich’s “Merced” (12/22)

Adrienne Rich’s “Merced” deals with, in Rich’s eyes, a failing “world that masculinity made/ unfit for women or men.” While the subject matter is nothing new for Rich, a radical feminist, the glimpse into the future elevates her message to a whole new level; Rich’s Orwellian prophecy places an irrevocable conviction on society—she offers not a warning but a legitimate sentencing of the future. Broken down into three stanzas, the timeline of “Merced” is inverted, with the first stanza dealing with the future, the second with the past, and the final stanza taking place in the present. In each of these stanzas, Rich puts a strong emphasis on feeling, conveying that a collective desire to transcend feeling, or more specifically, pain, will be society’s ultimate downfall.

The future Rich conveys in the first stanza of “Merced” is one of “hopeless incontinence” and homogeneity, though the absence of pain, as the following quotation demonstrates:

Identical rations

Death in order, by gas,

hypodermics daily

to neutralize despair

So I imagine my world

in my seventieth year alive

According to Rich, “a purposeless exchange/ of consciousness for the absence/ of pain” will bring her and society to the prison camp she so vividly depicts. The key word from this is “neutralize”: by vying to alleviate the world of despair, Rich feels that a purgatory-on-earth would be created, wrought with blandness, and sameness. And all for the absence of pain.

Pain is the very aspect of the river Merced that Rich takes solace in, as the following demonstrates: “merely to step in pure water/or stare into clear air/ is to feel a spasm of pain.” Other images of pain in this poem include burning “feet in the sand” and “body ached/ from the righteous cold.” Pain to Rich is a good thing, a reinforcing indication that she still has the ability to feel. In contrast to the previous stanza in which pain and despair are “neutralized,” the presence of pain in the second stanza affirms that the opposite of pain: pleasure. The solace that Rich finds in the river suggests an air of romanticism in this poem, however fleeting the nature imagery may be.

When the poem shifts from a nature to an urban scene in the third stanza, the poem does not shy away from the motif of feeling. Rich divulges that she is overwhelmed by emotion in the first lines of the stanza (“For weeks now a rage/ has possessed my body”) as if so sure of the future she previously details. Rich mentions the unfortunate fates of Viet Nam War protestors—Norman Mailer, and the Buddhists of Saigon—as well as a “black teacher last week/ who put himself to death/ to waken guilt in hearts/ too numb to get the message”. Rich feels as though she is one of few affected by these occurrences, whereas most others are impervious. In reflecting upon this, Rich fears something more powerful at work, mechanically removing humanity’s ability to feel, that is, taking away what is to be human.