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The Disillusionment of Ten O’clock
by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers In red weather.
_________________________
The Disillusionment of Ten O’clock is a fifteen line one stanza free-verse poem, by Wallace Stevens, that is primarily a complaint about lack of imagination. The Speaker introduces us to “white night-gowns” in the second line and proceeds to complain about them for the rest of the piece. He describes us as being “haunted” by this unimaginative sleep wear (with the sleep wear serving the purpose of being a metaphor for how most people live their lives in general.)
The thing that you notice immediately in the rest of the poem is the Speaker’s use of color – a contrast with the white described initially. We might consider “white” as a lack of color in context. They are *boring.*
Beginning in line 8, the complaint shifts from the lack of imaginative clothing to how that inevitably leads to a lack of imaginative dreaming. Only the drunken sailor, as the poem ends, breaks the pattern. (Perhaps from the perspective of the speaker, his drunkenness freed his imagination to not be boring.)
This poem as a strong Dr. Seuss vibe, in my opinion, and I can imagine a short cartoon produced of the piece in that style. There’s a certain streak in the creative arts that yearns for greater whimsy. This poem is a request to bring color to a world that lacks.
This theme of “where did the color go” is a present-day one, also. Should we be concerned? Are we choosing to live inside a boring and lifeless dystopia? Perhaps that’s what Wallace Stevens saw coming – even a century ago.
