Cleopatra Mathis’s “Getting Out”
distinguishes itself from all the other poems in this unit of literature
because it describes a much deeper and more genuine love than any of the other
poems in the unit. While every other short story and poem in this unit focuses
on individuals who are bitterly devoid of a relationship or left with nothing
but spite or hate for the person they once loved, “Getting Out” tells the story
of a couple who had every intention of loving each other their entire lives.
Unfortunately, through “the silent work of tightening the heart” (Mathis, 896),
the couple gradually fell out of a romantic love together and determined that
they could no longer function as a married couple. While the speaker never
identifies a specific reason for their eventual decision to divorce, her
description of the photo of the two of them with their matching eyes and hair
offers some insight into the reasons for their divorce. The fact that their
features matched each other so perfectly seems to indicate that they were two
very similar people who lacked little independence from one another. Perhaps
because they were so similar in nature, they felt as though they started to
lose a piece of their own identity and felt too confined within the marriage. A
specific reason for why the couple made the decision to divorce is not
essential to understand the essence of the poem, however, for the reader can
understand without details that these two individuals, despite their love for
another, simply had lives which did not coincide well with one another when
bound by marriage. This fact certainly points to a certain emotional maturity
which is lacking in all the other works in this unit. While every other work in
the Love Me Not Unit conveys a sense of hostility towards love and is filled
with hatred, spite, and rage, “Getting Out” simply describes a heartbreaking
but mutual falling out of love between two people. In every other work, the
speaker is blatantly hostile towards their past lover or every person of the
opposite gender in general. However, the emotional maturity of the man and
woman described in “Getting Out” is evident in the fact that neither one of
them hates the other. Unlike the other works in the unit, no blame is placed
and no spitefulness is expressed anywhere in the poem; rather, the speaker
merely talks of the pain of losing a relationship that they both desired to
last forever. While the speaker is accepting of the fact their physical
distance from one another prevents her from ever seeing him and seems comforted
to receive a yearly letter from her ex-husband saying that he has found
happiness , she also expresses a deep love for him that will never truly die.
The mature love between this man and woman is best embodied by the last two sentences
of the poem “Taking hands we walked apart, until out arms stretched between us.
We held on tight, and let go” (Mathis, 896). In this statement, the immense
level of emotional maturity and inexpressible love between the two is fully
manifested. While the couple could not survive in a married relationship, they
did not resent each other for the failure of their marriage; rather, they loved
each other enough to separate despite their deep care for another because they
understood that they would be happier leading separate lives. Therefore, the
element of emotional maturity that is embodied by the photograph of the couple’s
matching eyes and hair is critical to distinguishing this poem from every other
in the unit and expressing a kind of love for another that is difficult to
articulate.
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