19 pages • 38 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopA Miracle for Breakfast
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Sun and Nature
The sun symbolizes obliviousness and apathy; it doesn’t shine on the people who need it. The people waiting for breakfast are “so cold” (Line 8), and the sun could heat them but doesn’t. The speaker explicitly states, “[T]he sun / was not going to warm us” (Lines 9-10). The sun represents a lack of concern for the downtrodden crowd. The sun shines on the river, the “beautiful villa stood in the sun” (Line 26), and a “window across the river” (Line 38), but none of these things require the sun. The river doesn’t need coffee and bread, the villa is privileged, and the window across the river has nothing to do with the cold, hungry people waiting for breakfast. It’s as if the sun is indifferent to the people's struggles. The sun's lack of interest adds to the theme of alienation since the sun’s apathy separates it from the people. It's possible to argue that nature, in general, represents apathy and indifference as the river doesn’t help the people. Yet some use it as something of a trash can as they “scornfully” (Line 22) flick their crumbs into it.
The Crumb
The crumb represents imagination because the crumb is responsible for the vision of the sumptuous mansion. The speaker sees the villa not due to an otherworldly miracle but with “one eye close to the crumb” (Line 30). The crumb mediates the grand vision and helps the speaker cope with the lack of sustenance in their tangible present. The crumb spurs the speaker’s imagination and sends them to a world with plenty of coffee and direct sunshine. Through the crumb, the speaker creates a place of abundance and wealth, which suggests that the others who contemptuously “flicked” (Line 22) the crumb into the river might have been better off holding onto it.
Then again, perhaps the speaker is unique, as the speaker, unlike the others in the crowd, could see that the crumb held more potential than its measly appearance. In Stanzas 5 and 6, the crumb does represent sustenance as the crumb constructs a world in which the speaker has more than enough. Yet the nourishment isn’t sustainable as Stanza 7 pulls the speaker back into the glum scene where the sun is elsewhere, and the food and coffee are scarce.
Communion and Religion
In A Miracle for Breakfast, Megan Marshall describes the poem as a “communion rite,” which introduces the motif of spirituality and religion. In this reading, the man on the balcony and the crumb represent a priest and the eucharist. The crowd then symbolizes potential parishioners—but the people are isolated from each other and alienated from the man on the balcony, so the idea of religion is somewhat fraught. It’s not a communal, supportive atmosphere but a fragmented one. The people want more than what the man gives them, which suggests religion isn’t enough to squelch their suffering.
The speaker’s relationship to the crumb complicates the motif of religion, as the crumb gives the speaker a powerful vision. The keen picture suggests that the crumb, like the sacrament, has divine power. Yet the speaker stresses that their vision “was not a miracle” (Line 25). What formed their paradisal image wasn’t God or a symbolic communion but insects, birds, and the river. Thus, the motif of religion and communion seems to call into question the power of transubstantiation, with the speaker favoring nature and imagination over traditional religious miracles.
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By Elizabeth Bishop
