The Man With Night Sweats: Analysis and Poetic Devices

Thom Gunn

1. What is the poem The Man With Night Sweats about?
2. What is the theme of the poem The Man With Night Sweats?
3. What is the structure of the poem The Man With Night Sweats?
4. Line-By-Line Analysis and Literary Devices of The Man With Night Sweats

What is the poem The Man With Night Sweats about?

The poem was first published in 1992, in a collection of the same name. In this poem, “I” is the poetic persona, “the man with night sweats”. In the poem, the abject solitary persona wakes up at night paranoid about the implications of night sweats (an early symptom of AIDS) while suggesting a melancholic desire to forestall the inevitable.

Gunn said that “the poem is spoken by somebody who wakes up sweating and assumes that he has AIDS. I was lucky enough not to be HIV positive, but in those early years, when it seemed so mysterious, and so especially nightmarish, and when people that I knew were dying or had already died … If you sweat during the night, maybe you have flu, or maybe you just have too many blankets on, but you think: “Oh my god, this is night sweats, ” the night sweats that precede AIDS. ‘

(Campbell, James. Thom Gunn in Conversation. London: Between the Lines, 2000, p.49)

What is the theme of the poem The Man With Night Sweats?

“The Man with Night Sweats” by Thom Gunn explores the themes of illness, mortality, and the impact of disease on the human body. The poem delves into the speaker’s personal experience with a medical condition, alluding to HIV/AIDS during the AIDS era. The repetition of “I” emphasizes the speaker’s isolation and self-assurance as he confronts the specter of death. The poem juxtaposes the speaker’s past pleasures and risks with the present reality of a deteriorating body, evoking a sense of regret and vulnerability. The title, “The Man with Night Sweats,” adds a layer of complexity, referencing the physical symptom associated with the illness.

What is the structure of the poem The Man With Night Sweats?

The Man with Night Sweats follows a specific stanzaic structure of quatrains (four lines rhyming ABAB) alternating with couplets (two lines rhyming CC). This alternating structure of quatrains and couplets provides a sense of balance and symmetry to the poem.

“The Man with Night Sweats” is predominantly written in iambic trimeter.

Iambic trimeter consists of lines containing three metrical feet, with each foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (da-DUM). This creates a rhythmic pattern of three stressed syllables per line. Iambic trimeter enhances the emotional impact of the poem creating a sense of cadence.

Line-By-Line Analysis and Literary Devices of The Man With Night Sweats

In the poem, the speaker repeatedly refers to himself as “I” which suggests that he is self-assuring himself as he is reminded of the grim specter of death. It might also imply his isolation in the face of the endemic.

The title of the poem, “The Man with Night Sweats,” alludes to a medical condition associated with illnesses like HIV/AIDS. This allusion adds a layer of complexity and suggests deeper underlying themes related to illness, mortality, and the impact of disease on the human body.

I wake up cold, I who   A
Prospered through dreams of heat  B
Wake to their residue,    A
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.    B

• I wake up cold I who/ Prospered through dreams of heat: enjambment
• Prospered – thrive/ flourish physically

The poem begins with the image of the speaker waking up from sleep uncomfortable as he is cold due to sweat soaking his sheets. (The images of “dreams of heat” and “sweat, and a clinging sheet” in the AIDS era indicates both passionate encounter and a symptom of HIV during the acute phase)The next line plays out the ambiguity between dream and reality as the lines may either mean:

• The speaker woke up from a dream of a passionate encounter, the consequences of which are the night sweat and “clinging sheets” suggesting a sense of discomfort and unease, or
• The speaker refers to the transition from a sensual to a tormented self as he is paranoid about his serostatus after waking up from a dream sweating.

My flesh was its own shield:    C
Where it was gashed, it healed.  C

• Metaphor – My flesh was its own shield (flesh is compared to a shield)

The word “shield” is used three times in the poem. Here, the shield is used as a noun that does not refer to any armor but the speaker’s own physical body which has been the site of experiencing life’s pleasures and passions. It used to be a self-healing machine that detoxed and defended the system.

I grew as I explored  D
The body I could trust  E
Even while I adored D
The risk that made robust, E

• Even while I adored / The risk that made robust, – enjambment (In a poem the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line)
• the risk that made robust: alliteration

The focus of Thom Gunn’s poetry was often body, desire, and sexuality. Gunn was fascinated both by the elevation one achieved as well as the revelation of the darker aspects of self and life with drugs and sex. In his poems, he explores both these aspects in a compassionate way. Though the poetic persona is not Gunn himself, he seems to be made in Gunn’s image. These lines may allude to the notion that the speaker dabbled in drugs and engaged in sexual activities. The speaker explored the bodily pleasures and acquired knowledge about how his mind and body functioned and the subtle and not-so-subtle changes brought about by drugs. He trusted that his body would heal from the pleasurable risks that he subjected it to.

A world of wonders in F
Each challenge to the skin.F

The speaker refers to the excitement of offering his body to the dangers of penetration by needle and penis. This to him is both exhilarating and ego-enhancing.

I cannot but be sorry G
The given shield was cracked, H
My mind reduced to hurry, G
My flesh reduced and wrecked. H

The wrecked body was due for years of risk and has now not only disrupted his pleasures but also his peace of mind. He assumes that the innate immunity of the body has been lost and he has been infected with HIV, like his other friends. The speaker is anxious that he has exposed his body to HIV and now his fragile body has to grapple with death.

I have to change the bed,  I
But catch myself instead  I

As the speaker is about to get up and perform the quotidian task of changing the bed sheet that holds the resting body thereby linking the corporal and the intimate, he pauses and “catch”(es)or embraces himself instead.

Stopped upright where I am   J
Hugging my body to me   K
As if to shield it from   J
The pains that will go through me   K

The speaker desperately embraces his body as if to defend it from the agonies and sufferings. The word “shield” functions as a verb here, as “me” and “my body” seems to be separate entities, and “me” attempts to guard “my body” with a protective hug.

As if hands were enough   L
To hold an avalanche off.  L

• avalanche: movement of snow down a mountain destroying everything in its path; a metaphor of pain.

The couplet conveys the speaker’s conviction that the shield or the self-hug is insufficient to hold off the pain his body will experience.

Resources:

Complete Poem

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20616416

https://genius.com/Thom-gunn-the-man-with-night-sweats-annotated