A Game of Chess Explication

A Game of Chess is a statement about how superficial modern beauty is.

In the first stanza, the speaker is describing a beautiful Grecian room with marble floors, fruited vines, and “a golden Cupidon”, or the Angel-Baby of Love. In line five of “A Game of Chess”, the speaker says “Another hid [the Cupidon’s] eyes behind his wing”. This is the first reference to the overall theme, which is how blind we are to beauty in our society.

Later on, the speaker describes synthetic perfumes, “Unguent, powered, or liquid – troubled, confused and drowned the sense in odours…” and while on the outside these smells sound luxurious, they suddenly make the room seem fake and tawdry, not at all like the palace we were imagining. I imagine those tacky mall perfumes that they spray on you as you pass; they’re almost suffocating and make your mouth taste like rubbish.

Another example of this in the text is T.S. Elliot’s allusion to Greek Mythology, and the tale of Philomela and Procne. Basically, a king named Tereus raped Philomela and cut out her tongue so she couldn’t tell anyone. So, being unable to speak, Philomela weaved her story into some cloth and gave it to her sister, Procne. Procne then fed the king his own son as punishment, and before Tereus could catch the sisters, the gods changed Philomela into a nightingale, Procne into a swallow and Tereus into a hawk. The author says this poem would be“”Jug Jug” to dirty ears,” because the mythical tale wouldn’t make sense to uneducated people trying to understand it. It’s almost like T.S. Elliot is trying to weed out who should or shouldn’t be reading his poetry because they wouldn’t understand the importance.

In the second stanza, the blank verse structure begins disintegrating, along with what seems to be the new speaker’s state of mind. The new speaker is asking whomever she is talking to to speak to her, then asks why does he speak, then what is he thinking of, why does he ever think, and finally to “think”! The person the speaker is talking to says “I think we are in the rats’ alley, were the dead men lost their bones.” This is an allusion to World War II; the men who fought in the war used to call the trenches different nicknames- such as rats’ alley. This makes me think that the speaker is a veteran, or someone who is suffering from a severe case of PTSD. The speaker then asks about the noise outside, and his partner has to tell him it’s just the wind under the door, the speaker asks again, and his companion says “Nothing again nothing”. The enjambment of the next line “Do- you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?” shows that the speaker is becoming unhinged.

“I remember those are pearls that were in his eyes. Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?” This is the speaker’s counterpart’s reply. There are two important pieces in these lines, one is the allusion to the Phoenician Sailor from section one, and then the use of nothing for the sixth time. The Phoenician Sailor represented the fall of the great, which supports the theory of the speaker being an old war veteran. The use of nothing throughout the last few quotes is a statement about society, and how little we know nowadays, which has been a continuous theme.

After the insane speaker is finished talking, there is a sudden change in speaker during stanza three. The new speaker becomes a woman talking to her friends Bill, Lou, and Mary in a bar about one of her other friends. Basically, the speaker is recounting a conversation she had with a friend whose husband was coming home from war. This entire conversation supports the overall theme of superficial beauty in modern society.

A refrain that is happening throughout this entire segment is “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME”. This wasn’t an uncommon thing for bartenders to say at “last call”, which kind of gives us the setting in which this is taking place, and shows the change in speaker more effectively than just plain switching over. Also, it adds a sort of strange tension to the scenario that the speaker obviously doesn’t feel.

“He’ll want to now what you done with that money he gave you to get yourself some teeth.” In this line, the speaker was telling her friend that since her teeth are so gross, she needs to take some money and get them replaced. She basically tells her that she can hardly bear to look at her with her mouth in that state, and tells her friend to think of “Poor Albert”, who is probably her husband. This is a statement about superficial beauty in our modern society because this kind of thing actually happens in our world today, except it’s not just teeth. If we don’t like something about ourselves, we go to the doctor and have him, cut, pull, enhance, or downsize whatever that may be. It might not even be something that bothers you, but someone else. People will do crazy things to live up to the unrealistic standard of beauty set by society.

“You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique (And her only thirty-one.)” In this line, the speaker is now telling her friend that she looks old, even though she’s still a young woman. The friend replies that she can’t help it, that it had happened since she took some pills, and even though the chemist (probably a doctor) said nothing would happen, she had never felt the same. The pills she is talking about in this situation are abortion pills. This eludes to the infertility in section one, but it is more of a forced infertility. It’s still a statement to how superficial beauty is now, and how people may judge a person on their exterior without ever knowing their story.

As the bartender becomes more agitated at the loitering friends, he begins repeating “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME” more consistently until they pack up and move on. They end their terrible conversation with a severe change in tone. “Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night,” The use of “good night” is an allusion to Hamlet, and Ophelia’s drowning. A happy way to end this joyous poem, don’t you think?