Research Paper
English 1102-611
13 October 2015 Dream Song 14- John Berryman John Berryman lived a life full of demons. He is viewed as a very cynical, disturbed man who reflected his attitude into his writing. From the beginning of his life he faced emotional distress ranging from family issues, to marriage issues, to substance abuse. A traumatic beginning to his life not only negatively affected him; it also influenced his long and successful career in writing and teaching. Through his hardships, he created one of the most famous compilations of poems in history, The Dream Songs. These poems are littered with fresh and complex styles of writing, including his famous technique of using dialogue and personal revelation. Although he accomplished amazing things in the literary world, won awards and was a major arts figure in the world, he continued to struggle with himself. His never ending despair stemmed from the suicide of his father when he was young, which although very sad, shaped his life and his death to come. The Dream Song series is a modified and published version of his dream analysis treatment during rehab. By analyzing and annotating one of his most famous Dream Songs, Dream Song 14, and studying the major events of his life, it is frighteningly apparent how the effects of paternal suicide, emotional and sex abuse, and alcoholism shaped his life, his work, and his death. John Berryman was born in 1914. When he was 12 years old his father committed suicide and his mother moved him to New York City. This was during the time of the market crash; depression struck not only the country, but also 17 year old John when he attempted his own suicide in 1931. After these traumatic experiences he successfully graduated from an Ivy League school and had some of his writing published. He took his love of writing and became a teacher at many different colleges, all the while still writing and expanding on his literary knowledge and experience. Unfortunately his first alcohol induced episode was in 1938 when he was diagnosed with stress induced epilepsy, aggravated by alcohol. Many more were to come. Because of his epilepsy he received a 4-F for the war draft, which restricts him from serving due to a physical defect. His absence from the war allowed him to continue writing and even get married! He married Eileen Mulligan in 1942, and began having affairs only four years later. He became a sex maniac, addicted to sexual attention and adulation. He even took his obsession so far as to write and publish about his infidelities. His disgusting reputation does not keep people from loving his work; in fact, in the late 40’s he published ‘Poems of his generation’, a dialogue response to a very famous poem. In the works of this piece he introduced an anti-model of English and American writing styles which caused his emersion as a major literary figure in the art world. He continues to win awards and prizes and publishing beautiful work. He has a remarkable ability to quote long poetry and long stories and wants to use this skill to teach again! He is successful, important, influential, and iconic in his field of work so most would assume he would be happy and healthy.
A popular quote says “The bigger you get, the harder you fall,” this perfectly describes his down falls at this point in his life. In the 1950’s alcoholism ruined his life. After he divorced his wife 3 years later and was arrested for public intoxication and being a public disturbance things started to go even more downhill, and fast. He returned to rehab to face his alcohol addiction and abuse, where he was exposed to dream analysis therapy. After moving back to his birthplace, also his father’s suicide location, he takes the notes of his sessions and publishes them into his most significant piece of work, The Dream Songs. After his rehabilitation, it appears that his life is turning around for the better, he gets remarried with a 2 year old son and is offered a state sponsorship for him to do a lecture tour of India, but things are in fact getting worse. Berryman is recommitted to the hospital for exhaustion and soon divorces his wife and child. For the next three years, he continuously revisits the hospital for nervous breakdowns and alcohol abuse. He continued to teach and win awards and remain prestigious throughout all of this. Nearing the end of his life he decides to move to Ireland and continuously drink in excess. After revisiting rehabilitation numerous more times, he experiences a not so life changing religious conversion which seems to have no apparent change on his life when soon after he hurls himself off a bridge, thus bringing us to the end of his story. In 1972, John Berryman followed the footsteps of his father, ending his life, just how it had begun.
The affects of paternal suicide are extremely apparent throughout Author John Berryman’s life. His literature has a constant depressing tone, hinting at loneliness and abandonment in most of his pieces. Through his writing he expresses that he feels no extreme value of life, including his own, and shows no interest in self worth of the value of family either. The lingering effect of paternal suicide does not only show its teeth in his work, but also in his life. John was young when his father took his own life, him and his mother left and tried to forget but the effects obviously haunted John, he attempted to kill himself when he was only 17. Constantly throughout his life he shows no effort to sustain life, constantly drinking in excess, further aggravating his epilepsy and addiction. Not only does the death of his father leave him depressed and damaged, he also forms abandonment issues(Benfey). He repeatedly marries and divorces wife, after wife, after wife. He cheats on them and makes no effort to better his health or have strong relationships. Just like his father left him in the blink of an eye, he leaves his multiple wives with no sense of remorse. In one of many Dream Songs, Dream Song 14,as explained previously, he expresses no interest in his life, no value in anything, and no presence of love. In summary he is basically saying, “I am boring and no one likes me, not even a dog!” The effect of abandonment from his father is extremely apparent in this poem as he constantly revisits loneliness, no self worth, depression, lack of value in his life and of others around him.
It seems as though, alcohol is the most important thing in John Berryman’s life. He is an extremely smart, talented and admired artist and teacher who breaks the rules of literature and introduces new styles and techniques throughout his career. How could such an amazing author and person struggle so badly with alcoholism? Although he lives a great and successful life, John Berryman is constantly depressed and sick. He explains in Dream Song 14 that he finds interest in almost nothing, “People bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature, Henry bores me with his plight and gripes as bad as Achilles(Roberts).” He uses alcohol as a reality escape, he explains how boring his reality is, even the things that most people gawk over. Even his own work bores him! His poems often sound like drunken rants and have underlying tones of depression and delusion. Although his addiction to drinking places him in rehab and the hospital no less than 20 times in his life, he continues to be a dull, passive, bored man who makes no effort to see the value in his life. He is slowly killing himself with no remorse. Which raises the question, if people, art, literature, himself, and even alcohol bore him, why does he continue to write and teach something he proclaims to be such a drag? Maybe he is so sick of his reality he tries to study or create new ones, ones that don’t put him to sleep in a glass of gin. Maybe he continues to drink because he is comfortable with slowly killing himself, after all he had tried to commit suicide as a teenager and the influence of his father’s suicide lingered over his head his whole life. You can feel the emotion, pain, and loneliness in Dream Song 14. He writes in an accepting tone, he does not question why things are the way they are. He shows no initiative to change, to appreciate life, not only in his poems, but also shown in his real life when he continuously revisits rehabilitation centers for alcoholism. Through his writing he shows that the loneliness doesn’t bother him, in fact he amuses himself with drunken gripes and sarcasm and offbeat rhyme schemes in his writing, showing that he is fine being alone, he can entertain himself.
John Berryman was a sad man. He created and destroyed multiple relationships and marriages leaving his wives, children, and himself, lonely and drunk. He explains in Dream Song 14 that “people bore him” and “somehow a dog has taken itself and its tail considerably away…leaving behind: me, wag”, that he doesn’t like people, and people, even dogs do not like him. He cheated on his first wife Eileen Mulligan for years, he felt no remorse or regret for his actions at all. He went so far as to write about and publish the adventure of his adultery. This obviously ruined his marriage and he just moved onto his next wife. He became a sex crazed maniac, craving sexual attention and the quick satisfaction of adulation. He filed through women year after year and never showed a deep love or attachment to his spouses(Athey). Through all of his marriages he drank heavily and spent a lot of time working, he was also depressed and sick. He obviously had no appreciation for love in his life. His sexual abuse is yet another example of the boredom he continuously expresses in Dream Song 14. Even though married at the time he wrote these poems, he mentions no influence of love or romance, only his discrimination of the value of people around him. I believe that the effects of his father’s suicide caused him to struggle with suicidal tendencies, depression, alcoholism, and sexual and emotional abuse until his last day.
Dream Song 14 appears to be nothing more than the product of dream therapy during the rehabilitation of author John Berryman. By looking deeper into the poem and the authors’ history, I found that it is not just a poem, but an explanatory piece about the struggles he faced in his life. The poem sounds like a drunken rant, complaining that he is boring and so is everyone and everything else. By comparing the major events in his life leading up to and following his compilation of dream songs, I can easily see the ripple effect traumatic experiences early on, had on the rest of his life. Although he won hundreds of awards, published hundreds of pieces, taught hundreds of courses, and revolutionized writing as a whole, he lived a sad life. Paternal suicide, alcoholism, and sexual addiction drove his life into the ground. He is constantly sick and depressed, made worse by his alcohol addiction. He pushes his personal relationships to the side and shows no interest in the world around him. By comparing his personal history and the context of Dream Song 14, there is no doubt in my mind that the way he lived and wrote, was fully influenced by early traumatic events leading to poisonous behavior and disposition on reality.

Works Cited
Athey, Joel. "John Berryman's Life and Career." Modern American Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Web. 14 Sept. 2015.\
Benfey, Christopher. "The Genius and Excess of John Berryman." The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 0 Mar. 2015. Web. 14 Sept. 201

Berryman, John. "Chapter 16 Form:The Shape of Poems." 1964. Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 6th ed. N.p.: Pearson Education, 2015. 736. Print. Literature.

Roberts, Edgar V., and Robert Zweig, comps. Literature- and Introduction to Reading and Writing. 6th ed. N.p.: Pearson Education, 2015. Print.
Shmoop "Dream Song 14 Analysis." Shmoop. Shmoop University, 0 Jan. 2015. Web. 14 Sept. 2015.