The Enigma in The Listeners

The Listeners by Walter de la Mare is the exploration of the dichotomous relationship between silence and response. The poem begins with the arrival of a Traveller, a mysterious figure, at an isolated house in the middle of the forest on a moonlit night. Despite his urgent knocks on the front door of the house, he fails to receive any response from the inhabitants of the house. In fact, it is implied that the house is supposedly empty, except for a “host of phantom listeners” who are lurking in the darkness and listening to the cry of the Traveller. In essence, the poem is a depiction of the paradoxical nature of humans having a thirst for knowledge despite being aware of the astounding and inevitable mystery which lies in the path of gaining that knowledge.

The setting of the poem includes a house, residing alone in the middle of a forest and a lonesome Traveller visits it on a moonlit night. As if being one with the nature, even the horse of the Traveller is silent, as it chomped on the desolate “ferny floor” of the forest. All of these together paints a melancholic and meditative picture within the poem. In addition to that, the intentional unresponsive nature of the ghostly inhabitants of the house, which the Traveller is unaware of, adds a supernatural element to the setting poem.

The poem perfectly symbolizes the congregation of two worlds – the world of mute and pensive nature and the world of chaotic and noisy humans. The Traveller represents the humans’ inquisitive nature; their eagerness to dissect the nature the same way the Traveller’s harsh cries penetrated the silence of the lonesome house in the poem. On the other hand, the mute apparitions of the house symbolize the nature which holds all the knowledge but are waiting to be found out. However, the poem ends as the Traveller leaves, finally realizing that his urgent attempts to learn whatever he wanted to learn were met with failure. His attempts to get answers are not rewarded despite fulfilling his side of the bargain. The imagery created in this part of the poem symbolizes the unending mystery of the nature which the human mind has yet to fathom. In conclusion, people cannot always find the answers they seek. Thus, the enigma of the unknown continues.