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Ariel Shasha
Professor Payte
English 101
14 May 2015
What is True American Optimism?
In this critique of Dont let me be lonely, by Claudia Rankine, the lyrical genius of her
essay unravels the relationship shared between personal experiences of loneliness and death
and interpersonal experiences on a societal level. The structure of this essay sets the pieces in
place for an extrapolation of the main theme of national decay, exacerbated by issues ranging
from capitalism to classism, racism to terrorism, and optimism to fascism. Her essay does not
simply begin with words, but with the image of snow on an old television screen, indicating a
cold and formless sense of disconnect throughout American society. Other elements, such as
photography, blank pages, and various laundry-lists of items and scattered poetry, enable the
lyrical sense of the essay. The themes of loneliness and death are vivified through these
mediums and the lyrical structure becomes apparent through the multitude of illustrations in
this literary collage of images, prose and poetry.
Dont let me be lonely is a collection of messages, generated through fragmented, yet
somehow structured writing. It is simultaneously a chaotic and messy animal, clawing away at
the pages, begging to be understood. The beauty of Rankines work is that it is able to plant one
foot firmly in the concrete jungle of the modern world and the other in a vast Sahara, where
ideas, like lions, run rampant. Through her choices of diction, structure and organization, she
forms a mental bond with her readers. She specifically uses this style of writing to leave a void

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in the logic, where the reader is encouraged to ponder and extract their own logic and
thoughts.
Most readers would pick up this book, read a few pages and decide to put it back down.
However, through stepping back and connecting the dots of multiple chapters and pages
throughout the book, hidden treasures are unearthed. Racism, capitalism, terrorism, death,
loneliness are all major issues in American society, as seen through the eyes of Rankine.
However, the way the book is structured may not necessarily aid in explicitly telling the
message, versus coaxing these aforementioned issues into the open. As Ben Marcus proposed,
Fiction has, of course, since dropped this ingratiating, hospitable opener in favor of subtler
seductions, gentler heraldings of story (Marcus). Although Rankines work is a mixture of
fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose, it is intuitively blended with personal memoirs and
American politics. Nevertheless, Rankine seamlessly brings together these issues and braids
them into a singular one: we as a society are decaying, in a state of our own loneliness.
Through her unconventional style of writing, Rankine sets her book apart in a style of its
own. Dont Let Me Be Lonely resembles an onion, in the sense that through each blank
television screen and page filled with journal-like entries, we pause, cry a little because of the
content and continue on , peeling back an additional layer of her story. Although she never
blatantly yells out the underlying issue at hand, she allows her thoughts to run rampant onto
the pages, and still manages to sync it through paratactic structure. For example, the act of
coping with death is perfectly captured in the paratactic statement We can expect. We can

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resolve. We can come to terms with. Afterwards we wear their clothing, sit in their chairs, and
remember them. Profoundly remember them. But we are not responsible (Rankine 63).
Society has also gained this perspective of itself...that it is not responsible for its own decline. It
is a lonely apathy of the will, where we wear the clothes, so to speak, of imperfect
generations that have passed away.
In the first half of Dont Let Me Be Lonely, death and loneliness are stressed immediately
through an unconventional start, beginning with a blank television screen, resembling a lifeless
white noise drowning out all life. She effortlessly parallels this death and decay with that of
American society, hinting at underlying issues within the country. The stimulus of a televisionsaturated culture creates the effects similar to the debilitating effects of drug dependencies.
Christopher Nealon hints that one of the functions of this work of citations, I think, is to
protect the poet and her work from being drowned out by other media not least television,
which threatens to numb and depress the poet by making all life, because it streams
uninterruptedly at her though the screen, equally worthless (Nealon). The endless stream of
prescription drugs in America is the physical agent that threatens to numb society as a whole.
American optimism, funded by the extensive list of pharmaceutical companies (Rankine 115116), conveys how optimism and happiness are artificially manufactured for the masses.
Drugs, as an element of her text, are only one example of a form in which society
experiences decay through loneliness. The purposelessness perpetrated by American
optimism is conveyed, to a further degree, through Rakines insinuation that Sadness lives in
the recognition that a life cannot matter (Rankine 23). The result being societys grand

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disconnect from one another, such as how the drugs detach the reasoning of an individual from
consciously considering the state of their fellow human beings. Similarly, the media frequently
allows oneself to disconnect from society, in the sense that if the channel isnt favorable, it can
be changed. It is marginalization at the level of instant gratification; while attempting to
connect society through world events, it achieves the opposite by giving us the option to
segregate ourselves from unsavory issues. Want more of it in your life? Add it to the favorites.
Although Rankines text is often viewed as sporadic, chaotic even, with journal-like
entries throughout, she seamlessly braids together the concept of individual loneliness with
societal disconnect. Towards the end, the reader will deduce, from the array of issues jotted
onto the pages, that there is a listless sense of American detachment from society, much like
how the media drowns out ones life. The only way to immerse individuals into a relationship
with society is through the handshake, both mental and physical in the same way that she is
spreading her message across the book. To try and drown out the poisonous content of the
media and go back to simpler times, where connections were more genuine, In order for
something to be handed over, with the dual action that a hand must extend and a hand must
receive (Rankine 131). As she leaves us bits and pieces of the puzzle along the way, the picture
materializes towards completion. In order to combat societal disconnect, society must first
wash away its -isms on an individual basis. To disconnect itself from the isms (classism,
racism, capitalism) and come together once more, as a great nation. Only then will we know
true American Optimism.

Works Cited
Rankine, Claudia. Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Saint Paul, Minn.:
Graywolf, 2004. 23-131. Print.
Nealon, Christopher. "Christopher Nealon: On Don't Let Me Be Lonely." Christopher
Nealon: On Don't Let Me Be Lonely. 31 July 2014. Web. 25 May 2015.

http://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/criticism/christopher-nealondont-let-me-be-lonely
Marcus, Ben. On The Lyric Essay Ben Marcus: On the Lyric Essay. July 2004. Web.

http://benmarcus.com/writing/on-the-lyric-essay/