On W H Auden and Mud

In 1937 W H Auden’s poem, As I Walked Out One Evening was published. Auden’s elegy, describing the ballad and counter-ballad of lovers and time respectively opens and closes with images of a brimming river. Within this aqueous framing Auden explores themes of love, its perpetuity, time and nature.

Jeff Nichols’ Mud, while likely not consciously channelling Auden, explores parallel themes and has as essential to its narrative a river that similarly opens and closes this slice of Americana. Mud follows two young Arkansas boys whose discovery of a speedboat lodged in a tree pulls them into the world of the eponymous drifter.

Mud is a both a romantic (he is desperately and blindly in love with a woman who does not reciprocate) and a streetwise orphan and in these way he imparts something of himself into both of his young followers.

The ophidian dangers that lurk in the waterways ensure time is a constant concern. A snakebite can cause death within twenty minutes with the nearest clinic an hour away. The young boys must always make sure they return home in time to avoid suspicion and Mud, an outlaw, must plan his escape with precision. In these ways time, as in As I Walked Out One Evening is master of Mud and Ellis and their desire for a love everlasting. As in Auden’s poem time is triumphant. Both characters lose what they held so dear and in their own ways are forced, by time, to face different fates.

Yet amongst this battle between love and time is the brimming river. Both Mud and Ellis live off the riches the river provides and both are forced to leave it (Ellis for the city, Mud for the ocean). But it is here, in the symbolism of the river that Mud shares its strongest theme with As I Walked Out On Evening. Auden uses the river to conclude his lament with a positive image; the river brims, a sign of life and nature. Neither love nor time (both man made constructions) is everlasting, but nature is and will outlive them both and paradoxically, this becomes a positive image for humanity. They may have lost the love that once defined their lives and time may have reminded them who is in charge, but we feel that Mud and Ellis will be okay, even if we’re never told so.