In "The Farewell" by Edward Field, Field uses a metaphor to convey the fundamental message to the reader that often times, what others say cannot be trusted. This metaphor begins when a captain goes into the water because "they say the ice will hold" and he is "forced to believe them" by his "act of trusting people." "Naturally it gaps open" and subsequently the captain falls in, creating a metaphor for the reader that trusting others from the outside may result in an unexpected ending. This metaphor relates to the human condition; just as the sailor fell under ice as a result of him trusting others, so too are we vulnerable to failure and tragedy if we rely on others' words and thoughts. In the situation of the poem, the people had no way of knowing definitively that the ice would not break but even so, the speaker of the poem listened to them and was subsequently faced with death. Edward Field, through the metaphor that is "The Farewell", relays the consequences of trusting others through this story of the captain.
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