Written by Xiang Zhang

for Prof. Bryan Sentes

The poem “Sudbury, Night” by Armand Garnet Ruffo takes place in Sudbury, an industrial city famous for its mining activities. It is the speaker’s childhood memory of his family travelling to Sudbury on a Saturday night to watch the slag pour. Interestingly enough, this event is remembered so that different subjects concerning our perception of environmental issues are treated. First, the poem’s imagery reveals the poet’s exasperation apropos our passive reaction to environmental crisis. Then, this discontentedness is further expressed by its figures of speech. Therefore, “Sudbury, Night” denounces people’s passivity towards environmental destruction by means of imagery, as well as by its figures of speech.

 
To begin with, the poem revolves around the opposing imagery of what is visible versus what is not visible in order to criticize our acquiescence towards industrial exploitation. On one hand, the concept of non-visibility is emphasized in the beginning of the poem. For example, in the first stanza, the speaker describes the slag pour as “[a]n inferno of molten rock / poured over the edge of the world” (1-2). In these very first two lines, the industrial mining activity is confused with volcanic lava because it is occurring on “the edge of the world”, which is really far away from the speaker’s point of view. From this confusion, we get a sense that his compromised vision exposes him to a false image of the event. In other words, the speaker’s perception is distorted because he isn’t able to see clearly due to distance. Analogously, the global population lives under a misrepresentation of environmental issues and it cannot take hold of reality because the destructions are occurring far away. From this perspective, the mass is ignorant because it cannot see the truth by itself, and in consequence, confuses it with representations from the media instead. Therefore, the image of non-visibility connotes human’s naivety. On the other hand, the image of visibility emerges towards the end of the poem. It depicts the speaker’s awakening and consciousness when he is finally able to see the concrete consequences of the mining industry on the landscape. For instance, in the last sentence of the poem, the speaker is “wide-eyed” and describes the city as “scarred” and “mess[y]” (18-19). At this point, it is the next day’s morning and the speaker realizes the ugliness of the landscape as the family was passing through the solidified slag. In fact, this awakening has made him conscious of the madness going on in Sudbury. To put it another way, when distance is no longer compromising the speaker’s vision, he was able to perceive the ugly truth with his “wide eye[s]”and, from this point on, he is no longer ignorant. However, his knowledge of the circumstances is no use since he is, as stated in the last sentence, “ready to leave/… for the comfort of lush/ bush” (17-21). In other words, when they finally realize the gravity of the situation, instead of trying to change something, the family’s reaction is to flee. The same thing goes for all of us: we live on this planet as if we had another one to go to. When we eventually realize the seriousness of global warming, for example, instead of recreating what we have destroyed, most of us find that it is too much effort and would rather leave for somewhere better instead. This passivity of ours is exactly what the poem is condemning. To sum up, the opposing imagery of non-visibility, which represents our ignorance when we do not have access to reality, and visibility connoting consciousness, as well as our reaction after our awakening, denounce our acquiescence when encountering environmental destruction.

 
Furthermore “Sudbury, Night” condemns human’s powerlessness by its various figures of speech such as simile and pathetic fallacy. Firstly, the simile in the last stanza portrays the speaker’sstate of mind while watching the slag pour: “Fixed, fixated, transfixed / like a deer caught in a blind of headlight” (12-13). In fact, he is so mesmerized by the action of slag pouring that he is “fixed, fixated and transfixed”. Notice that the speaker’s motionlessness is compared to “a deer caught in a blind of headlight”, which is a common expression that brings to mind ineluctable danger. In fact, the car hitting the deer is somehow inevitable, just like the speaker cannot do anything about the slag pour, even though it is dangerous and harmful for the environment. Both the deer and the speaker stay still because they are in a position of impotence. In other words, they are both passive as they watch the danger approaching because of their inability to do something in order to avoid it. To draw a parallel, the extinction of the human race is inexorable since nobody has the power or courage to act against dangerous industrial practices. Thus, this simile condemns our inaction in order to provoke our reaction. Furthermore, the pathetic fallacy in the last stanza consolidates the human state of impotence, “The grey rock despair / around us” (14-15). Hopelessness, a human feeling, was attributed to a rock in order to emphasize the powerlessness of the speaker, along with his family, as they pass through the ugly industrial landscape and do nothing to make a change. To put it differently, human passivity is criticized because even the rock –an inanimate object– is “despair[ed]” seeing that nobody will act against these industries. Therefore, our powerlessness facing environmental destruction is condemned by the simile comparing the speaker to “a deer caught in … [the] headlight” and by the pathetic fallacy attributing the feeling of desperation to a rock.

 
In conclusion, this poem criticizes people’s passivity towards industrial exploitation that destroys the environment by contrasting images of visibility versus non-visibility, as well as by its figures of speech, simile and pathetic fallacy. In the first place, the poem’s imagery of non-visibility connotes the ignorance of the mass due to its inaccessibility to reality and the imagery of visibility depicts our consciousness and inaction after awakening in order to criticize people’s acquiescence towards environmental destruction. In the second place, the simile accentuates our passivity by comparing the speaker to “a deer caught in [the] headlight” and the pathetic fallacy further emphasizes our inaction by attributing the human feeling of hopelessness to a rock. Overall, these two literary devices, imagery and figures of speech, band together in order to strongly verbalize the condemnation of our passivity. The speaker, along with his family, stays passive throughout the whole poem. However, we know that the child eventually grew up to be the author of this poem which inarguably condemns all those who are not acting upon environmental issues. If the speaker can, with time, realize his mistakes and write this poem trying to make a difference, then there is still hope for all of us. It is time to step out of this position of powerlessness and make the world a better place.

 

Work Cited

 Garnet Ruffo, Armand. “Sudbury, Night.” Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry. By Madhur Anand and Adam Dickinson. Sudbury, Ont.: Your Scrivener, 2009. 54. Print