Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marie Howe’s "Buying the Baby" is a meditation on childhood morality, Catholic guilt, and the elusive nature of selflessness. The poem recalls a school tradition in which students could "buy a pagan baby for five dollars," an act framed as both charitable and redemptive. The ritual of saving and naming the baby reinforces a sense of agency and virtue, yet Howe complicates this seemingly innocent practice by exploring the speaker’s motivations and doubts.

The first stanza establishes the ritual?s structure: "And when you bought it you could name it Joseph, Mary, or Theresa, the class took a vote." The limitations of these names suggest an imposition of religious identity upon an unknown child, reflecting a colonialist impulse to reshape the foreign into something familiar and acceptable. The classroom setting—where collective participation creates a sense of moral accomplishment—contrasts with the speaker’s individual experience, which soon diverges from this framework.

The narrative shifts when the speaker, in a rare moment of independent generosity, arrives with "the five dollars my grandmother had given me for my birthday." This money, meant for personal use, is instead offered up for charity. Yet, the act is immediately undercut by circumstance: "something happened—a fire drill? an assassination?" The vagueness of this interruption emphasizes the insignificance of the speaker’s action within the larger world, where real crises overshadow symbolic gestures of benevolence. The grand moment of "Marie Howe has, all by herself, bought a baby in India and gets to name it" never materializes. Instead, the event is "overshadowed and forgotten."

This realization introduces the poem’s deeper concerns: the failure of good intentions, the self-awareness of pride, and the inability to truly connect with another’s suffering. The speaker attempts to imagine the baby, "the CARE package carried to her hut and placed before her, as her sisters and brothers watched," but the image dissolves. Instead, her mind shifts to "the long shining hall to the girls’ lavatory." The substitution of an immediate, tangible space for an abstract, distant life underscores the difficulty of maintaining genuine empathy beyond personal experience.

This disconnect is further emphasized in the night scene: "Even in my own room, waiting for Roy Orbison to sing ‘Only the Lonely’ so I could sleep, I couldn’t conjure that baby up." The mention of Orbison’s song adds an ironic layer; the lyrics speak of isolation and longing, mirroring the speaker’s realization that her intended kindness cannot bridge the gap between herself and the unknown child. The donation—intended as an act of selflessness—becomes an exercise in futility, as "The five dollars I gave her would never reach her. I knew that: because I wanted my class to think me good for giving it."

Here, the poem shifts from external failure to internal reckoning. The speaker’s self-awareness transforms her initial pride into guilt. She recalls the nuns’ warnings about "Spiritual Pride… a Sin of Intention, sister to the Sin of Omission." This Catholic doctrine suggests that even the thought of virtue, if tainted by self-interest, constitutes sin. The paradox of moral intention—how one can simultaneously do good and be guilty of vanity—becomes the poem’s central tension.

The final lines bring this introspection into a mystical realm: "Sometimes I prayed so hard for God to materialize at the foot of my bed it would start to happen; then I’d beg it to stop, and it would." This moment captures the paradox of faith—the yearning for divine affirmation and the fear of its reality. The speaker’s prayer reveals a desire for certainty, a proof of goodness, yet she recoils when it seems within reach. This mirrors her earlier dilemma: she longs to be generous, but the purity of her actions is undermined by the need for recognition. The poem suggests that true selflessness, like the physical manifestation of God, remains just out of reach.

"Buying the Baby" is ultimately a meditation on the complexities of morality, childhood innocence, and the inescapable contradictions of human nature. It exposes the limits of good intentions, the weight of religious guilt, and the difficulty of true altruism in a world where self-awareness often corrupts sincerity. The poem lingers in this unresolved space, where both faith and virtue are fragile, fleeting, and deeply human.

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