19 pages • 38 minutes read
A Small Needful Fact
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Themes
Ecosystems and the Interconnectedness of Life
As any gardener can tell you, all life is connected—a truth at the core of “A Small Needful Fact.” The poem concludes with a description of an interconnected community of organisms, or an ecosystem. In the final lines, plants “house / and feed” (Lines 10-11) insects and small animals. Through the process of photosynthesis, these plants also convert sunlight into oxygen, “making it easier” (Line 14) for larger mammals, like humans, to breathe. During his life, Garner fostered this ecosystem by planting vegetation in the soil. After his death, he still contributes: The vegetation continues to grow, and Garner was laid to rest in the earth. This implied image of Garner as a seed is particularly salient in the poem’s context of social justice; Garner’s death is transformed beyond a murder to become a sacrifice, and Garner himself transforms from a victim to a martyr whose death helped galvanize a nation toward overwhelmingly “needful” action. His death becomes a new life for others, framing an ecosystem that transcends the literal flora and life processes described in the poem.
Natural Continuity and Unnatural Death
Continuity, a direct correlative of the theme of ecosystems and life’s interconnectedness, is expressed in both the poem’s content and form. The poem’s content is a description of Garner’s plants growing and thriving long after the gardener’s death (Lines 9-15). The continuity within the poem’s form derives from its composition as a single sentence. The form thus imitates and emphasizes the poetic action.
The naturalness of an ecosystem’s life and continuity contrasts sharply with the unnaturalness of murder—a violent and artificial termination of life. However, while this contrast is radical and central to the poem, it is also only implicit; the poem does not directly address the murder, the presence of which exists only in quiet allusion: the past tense of Garner’s work, and the juxtaposition of photosynthesis (“making it easier / for us to breathe” [Lines 14-15]) with Garner’s death through asphyxiation and his last words, “I can’t breathe.”
The poem’s form and direct (rather than alluded) content embody continuity rather than abrupt termination—a testament to the poem’s defining impulse toward hope.
Racism, Martyrdom, and Social Change
While the poem does not explicitly address it, racism is the entire occasion for the poem: Garner’s murder was a racist act, and his martyrdom synonymous with the Black Lives Matter movement. The poem cannot be read outside this context.
Like the poem’s concern with murder—and despite the defining nature of the theme—the theme of racism is implicit. It is also conveyed partly through irony, which is immediate in the image of gardening. Gardening is a nurturing, life-giving activity that contrasts not only with the white policeman who stole Garner’s life but with the motivating racist notion that so many of these policemen harbor: the stereotype of Black men as threatening. The contrast is not only between life-giving and life-taking, but between love and hatred.
Racism, thematically, is also what gives full meaning to the implied symbolic image of Garner as a seed, his slain body returned to the earth; his death is essentially a sacrifice, inciting social transformation driven by those who have the humanity to recognize the murder for what it was—racist—and the courage to respond. Part of this response has been the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement, whose slogan—"I can’t breathe”—consecrates and illuminates the poem’s final lines as well as the central image of gardening. This idea of social transformation finds metaphorical expression in the poem’s basic imagery: from earth to plants, to sunlight, to air.
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