Tattoo

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2003

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Declining Virility

Through their observations regarding an older man wandering a “yard sale” (Line 10), the speaker comments on the physical shifts that happen as men age and pass from sexual potency. The current age of the man is made clear by the description of the tattoo on his “bony old shoulder” (Line 4). Further, the tattoo that “once” (Line 1) made a “statement” (Line 1) has faded with time to look like “just a bruise” (Line 3). The speaker believes that once the man was “strong as a stallion” (Line 8), someone who “you had to reckon with” (Line 7). Popular myth uses the aggressive stallion as a symbol of virility, often surrounding the lone horse with several mares, although this is not always biologically accurate. In this poem, the symbol is used traditionally to stand for male vigor. When younger, the man was ruled by the “vanity” of his masculinity (Line 5), and the speaker believes the subject got the tattoo because “the ache” (Line 6) of rejection “lingered on” (Line 6). Now, no longer “fast and ornery” (Line 8), the man is not the leader, like a stallion, but just “another old man” (Line 13) who meanders around the displays, examining “tools and putting them back” (Line 14). Like the “stallion” (Line 8), and the “tools” (Line 14) on display, he has been “broken” (Line 14). “His heart has gone soft and blue” (Line 15). Like the tattoo, he is fading from view.

Holding on to Heartache

One of the major lessons of “Tattoo” is not to hold on to dissatisfying love. It is not productive to live in the past and be anchored by heartache. The old man, when young, got a tattoo to remind him of the betrayal of love, symbolized by the “dripping dagger” (Line 2) held in the “fist / of a shuddering heart” (Line 2). However, the man’s feeling of being gripped by this heartache has prevented him from moving forward. The tattoo’s constant reminder of the betrayal that “punched him hard” (Line 5) and the “ache [that] lingered on” (Line 6) has become a permanent and ill-defined “bruise” (Line 3), akin to the tattoo itself. The image of subject as “only another old man” (Line 13)—who still displays the tattoo under his “rolled up” (Line 12) sleeve—hints that this loss has long been the chip on his “bony old shoulder” (Line 4). At the “yard sale” (Line 10), he searches the “tools” (Line 14), examining one after another. Metaphorically, he may be trying to find a way to mend his broken heart, a bit like the Tin Man in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). However, all the tools are “broken” (Line 14), and he continues to suffer from loss and betrayal at the end.

One Moment Versus Many

Another possible reading of “Tattoo” hinges on its very last word: “stories” (Line 15). Up to this point, we see the subject of the poem—the old man—as someone who made a “statement” (Line 1) about loss and betrayal by getting a tattoo of a “dripping dagger held in the fist / of a shuddering heart” (Lines 2-3). The unknown observer of the man assumes this is because “vanity once punched him hard / and the ache lingered on” (Lines 5-6). But this was, also observed by the speaker, a long time ago. The tattoo has faded with age and now appears as “just a bruise” (Line 3) of the man’s “bony old shoulder” (Line 4). The old man has lived several years past when he was first tattooed. As “another old man” (Line 13), it is a possibility that the subject may no longer be affected by the long-ago person who broke his heart. The loss may have, like the tattoo itself, passed from bright detail into the dull ink of memory. At the end of the poem, the speaker says that the man’s “heart [has] gone soft and blue with stories” (Line 15). The multiplicity of the word “stories,” its plurality, suggests that the man has had many loves and losses since that first heartbreak. The initial story of betrayal (represented by the tattoo) has been subsumed by the multitude of stories in his life, the ones that made his emotional life “soft” with them. In this way, the image of the old man as keeper of many emotions becomes stronger than the image of a man affected by a single event.