Wraith Poem Analysis

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"Wraith" by Edna St. Vincent Millay explores the complexity behind the ambiguous presence of the wraith suspended within the house. Never explicitly stated in the text, the wraith’s spirit lingers through the lines of the poem aided by the speaker’s use of personification. Portrayal of rain through humanistic traits, and by addressing aforementioned with female personal pronouns, constructs a conscious for an inanimate concept. As such is paralleled to a ghost-like figure haunting the speaker’s home and mind, rain allows for a visible embodiment of the paranormal spirit. In the poem, the speaker effectively personifies this beautiful yet haunting rain, allowing them the freedom to explore the supernatural wraith, it 's respective characteristics and most specifically, the reasoning behind it 's looming presence as it resonates throughout the poem. Rain is being used to conceptualize the speaker’s proposed hosting of a haunting spirit in order to aid in the questioning of the metaphysical claim of supernatural presence within the house. "Glimmering eyes," and "Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,-" paint a vivid person like picture, yet these phrases are only being used to describe the inanimate, common and natural concept of rain. By doing such, the rain is being held to a higher level of consciousness, therefore being granted a mind with motives as well as a conscious which stretches beyond rain’s typical denotation. As a result, the speaker never refers directly to

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