Bag of Bones

The poem’s speaker uses the setting and extended meditations on the human remains that litter it to stress the cruel anonymity of mass deaths. The poem takes place in the site of a mass grave, where countless bones are scattered. Unlike traditional burials, which in every society feature a respectful and ceremonial approach to paying homage to human remains, this scene transports the reader into a place where death has become meaningless, depressingly common, and perpetrated on such a scale that burial practices no longer apply. Instead of being able to care for her loved one’s body in death, the unnamed woman is forced to shift through the dead remains of many other people before finding the remains of the man she loved; she must collect and carry what she finds, deprived of dignity, as a “bag of bones”—an object so horrifying and traumatic that it becomes the poem’s title. The idea of a “bag of bones” emphasizes the significance of the undignified and undifferentiated end to this man’s life: Instead of being treated as an individual, whose skull could reflect his life experiences and preferences, the man’s untimely death has reduced him to a series of anonymous, scattered remains that have to be painstakingly identified and retrieved.