Poem Analysis: Wallace Stevens' The Disllusionment of Ten' O' Clock

Disillusionment of Ten o' Clock

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.

In Wallace Stevens’, “The Disillusionment of Ten’O’Clock”, I found the simple of the image of the night-gowns in the haunted houses beautiful yet lacking.  I do like the idea of comparing ghosts as night-gowns, and the tigers with stripes seen by drunken sailors as their interpretations of these strange spirits. But, when I look at the poem, the repetition in the middle, of how the gowns are not wearing purple gowns, green gowns, and yellow gowns begins to make the poem sound like a list. It also just breaks the flow of the poem—if anything, I wish the poem could have said how there were ghosts haunting these houses, and then the way the sailors interpreted them, rather than doing the boring list of what they weren’t. Then again, there must be some sort of underlying symbolism behind it—but for now, I don’t know what it is.