On “The Bachelor Watches ‘The Bachelor’” by Jacob Saenz
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The poem “The Bachelor Watches ‘The Bachelor’” by Jacob Saenz is written in a form of “fantasy”. The narrator of the poem watches the bachelor every night, on his couch, alone. When he starts the show, he starts thinking of himself as a person in the show. The narrator is living his life as a follower and a watcher, not a doer. If he really wanted to be like someone on the show then he would go do something about it, he can change his life. He clearly cares about a life that he wants to live in more than his own life along with the feeling that his life has no purpose or meaning. When the narrator watches the Bachelor, he sees meaningful lives with purpose, and then he sees his life, no purpose no meaning, nothing.
The narrator does not feel that his life has any purpose or meaning. He chooses to explain and express his life in very few lines throughout the poem. When the narrator does talk about his life, he talks about it in a condescending way that gives off a vibe or feeling of annoyance and regret. The narrator doesn’t have a completely terrible life, it is honestly just average, but average just isn’t what he wants. You can tell that he wants excitement and adventure. The man himself is: “A lowly office worker who lives / w/ a roommate in an apartment where / dust balls decorate the floors and walls / and the ceiling rings w/ children’s feet / running back and forth like baby bulls” (5–9). His life does not suck, he has a place to live and a somewhat stable job, but it is clear that this is not his ideal choice of living. He describes his living situation as somewhat depressing as he and his roommate live in an apartment with noisy upstairs neighbors. His description of living also shows that he is not very wealthy hence his “lowly” office job.
The narrator has very few things to look forward to in his day, one of those things being his late night beers, “I reach for a bottle of beer deep in the back of the fridge, pop the top like a question & take a swig, cold & crisp once it hits my full lips”. You can tell that drinking beer is one of the highlights of the narrators day(s) based on his descriptive words about this moment. He describes the beer as cold and crisp, which are descriptions that one would use when having a good beer or drink in general. All things considered, the narrator definitely would choose the bachelor life over his life as he only chooses to describe his life in less lines then when he describes the life of a bachelor.
The life of a bachelor is described as purposeful and meaningful. The narrator describes a bachelor as “a farmer who lives alone in a loft”. Compared to the narrator’s style of living, a bachelor’s lifestyle is much more sophisticated and expensive. Obviously living in a loft as well as living alone is appealing to the narrator based on his current living situation. He feels that people on the bachelor have purpose in their lives, for example “ At the end of the show, I find myself proposing to a fertility nurse in a barn made to look like a chapel & not the place where I raised my first horse”. By the narrator including this line in the poem he is showing that getting married and finding love is important to him, he feels that these are meaningful things in life that he wishes to experience one day. Another thing that is clearly meaningful to the narrator is going on romantic dates, he seems to be a romantic kind of guy based on this line in the poem “a date in a castle, a glass / slipper prop, a clock winding its way / down to midnight. My date & I sip / champagne, chat & eat, then we dance / to a live orchestra led by a maestro / who wishes he were dead” (19–24). The narrator deep down really wants to change his life, he really wants to be like the people on the show but he just has to dig down deep and find a drive to change his life into something meaningful and into something that he cares about.
In conclusion the narrator is a dreamer. He lives a normal life, but normal isn’t what he wants. He fantasizes about living a meaningful life, like one would live on the show “the bachelor”. The narrator shows his love and drive to want a meaningful life as he only chooses to talk about his life in about three lines throughout the poem, while choosing to talk about the life of a bachelor for the rest of the poem. Overall the narrator is one living a good life who just isn’t living it to the fullest.
Abstract
With my poem, I wanted to figure out why he feels that his life is meaningless and has no purpose. To get my results I basically read the poem over and over again to look for little details. One of the things I realized that the narrator only talks about his own life in less then three sections of the poem and throughout the rest of it he talks about the life of a bachelor and how great their lives are. I learned that even though he really doesn’t enjoy his life, he doesn’t have a bad life he just isn’t taking full advantage of his average american life. In conclusion I think that the narrator has a good life but needs to live it to its fullest potential. The narrator also needs to find more purpose and meaning in his own life because if he can’t find those traits in his own life he won’t be able to grow as a person or he won’t be able to try and create a life that he actually wants to be in. Without a drive and passion in his whole life, trying to get motivated for something seems to be very difficult for him and I think that overall his mind isn’t set on the right things at the moment.
Work Cited
Saenz, Jacob. “The Bachelor Watches ‘The Bachelor’.” Poetry . September 2017, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/143950/the-bachelor-watc hes-the-bachelor . Accessed 25 Sept. 2017.
