The word albatross can be defined as a bird or a metaphor for a figurative burden or weight. Throughout the poem, “The Albatross,” the wife remembers the time when her marriage had life and happiness, when it was not dreary and tasking. She suffers with it, weighing her down physically and mentally that she lives more in the past than the present. When her husband finally comes home, he “no longer seems familiar, only strange.” Finally, the necklace breaks, lifting an “albatross” from the wife and changing the tone from solemnness to melancholy. In Kate Bass’s poem she uses the symbolistic value of a necklace value of a necklace to convey that love cannot be taken for granted.
At the beginning Bass illustrates the wife’s memories of the better parts of her relationship. “When I know you are coming home I put on this necklace… I like to think I am remembering you. I like to think that you don’t forget” (1-6). She is pretending that they still have what they once did as the necklace represents the marriage between husband and wife. When the marriage was simpler and happier it was “a blue that used to match my eyes” (4), when they were brighter and had a spark reflecting what the marriage once was.…show more content… Bass uses sensory imagery to link the symbolism of the necklace with the physical toll the marriage has on the wife. The child that she and her husband have together is the object that took the sparkle out of their marriage. The wife must now sit at home and toil with her baby while the husband is presumably working. “I swing her roll her in my arms… as I sit her in my lap and wish away the afternoon” (10-13). The wife is tired of the same routine that she feels is expected of her because of the child. Each day she is cleans and takes care of their child so, in a form of rebellion against the tedium; she spends the day doing