“Nobody heard him, the dead man, / but still he lay moaning:” (lines 1-2). This is how many people go on through life. Many are dying inside but you would never know. It is possible for people to create masks to hide their emotions. Sometimes these masks are so deceptive that even close friends or family members cannot see through then until it is too late. In Stevie Smith’s poem, “Not Waving but Drowning” the writer effectively highlights how someone’s cry for help can be mistaken for joy. It is important for people to at least have someone who cares about them and knows them well enough to see when something is going wrong in their lives. This can often be the lifeline that saves one from drowning.Recently I learned firsthand how deceptive these masks could be. Someone that I know but that I was not really close to took his own life this past week. On the outside he seemed like a happy person. He had a lot of ‘boys’ and everyone seemed to know him. But could it be that something was going on inside that no one knew about? “Poor chap, he always loved larking / and now he’s dead / It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, / they said.”(Lines 5-9) This is how it was with his guy, everyone cold only speculate why he would kill himself because none of them knew anything except that he was a fun guy to be around. It’s a shame that it takes something as drastic as suicide to make people even wonder if people have conflicts going on inside them that can be extremely detrimental to them. As the speaker states, “Oh no no no, it was too cold always, / … / I was to far out all my life” (lines 10-12). Only a true friend would know this and like the man I referred to earlier it can be assumed that the man in the poem had no true friends.Many people in this world have no true friends and those that do have very few. A true frien...
