Point of View

“The Bean Eaters” is spoken from a third-person omniscient point of view. In many ways the poem reads like a bird’s-eye perspective of the Bean Eaters as they sit down to dinner. We see their table of “plain and creaking wood” (3), their habitual activities like “putting on their clothes” (7), and the objects that surround them such as “vases and fringes” (11). But although the perspective seems omniscient, knowing that the Bean Eaters “are Mostly Good” (5) and “have lived their day” (6), it does not open a window directly into the thoughts of either half of the pair. Instead, it describes the outward manifestations of those thoughts, such as the “twinklings and twinges” (10) they experience in the act of remembering. In this way, though the perspective brings readers face-to-face with the Bean Eaters, it maintains the point of view of a third-party outsider.

The reference to “this...