Unsettling Theme Of Death In Vacancy, By Nikolas Maden

Nikolas Maden—author of Vacancy— is a promising student here at Ivy Tech. In Mé Tis’s ninth edition, he captured two beautiful photos along with his literary work, one of which became the cover art for the book. Vacancy’s unsettling theme of death rocks you back and forth, along with the timeline, through the memories of what once was and the mystery of what will remain.

“The first coughs of winter begin to invade with their cold bite” (28). From the beginning of the poem, the author sets the scene of early winter the voice is presently witnessing. “The trees groan like arthritic joints and through the skeletons the gray house stands” (28). The voice of the story looks through the bare trees, leaves absent resembling a skeleton due to the

Not only do they state that they know the inside of the house, they continue to describe the inside of the house to the reader in specific detail such as the “fifties gas stove with its scotch marks” or the “clock on the wall that chimes every hour”. “Still I wonder how they left it—my mind reconstructs the scene” (28). As the voice reconstructs the previous scene as they most likely had last saw it, they describe an oxygen machine that “sits silently, no longer hissing at regular intervals” and the doors that were “locked half-heartedly”. The author is portraying that death has arrived for the person using the oxygen machine, which is no longer needed, and the doors are locked half-heartedly for it is no longer serving protection. From the arrival of death, I would assume that the author is describing the scenario of two days prior which would explain how the voice would gather that the home has sat “in a silent stasis for two days already”

We now can assume a widowed man was using the oxygen machine and that he is welcoming death in this memory to reunite with his wife that death had separated him from. But this scenario is depicted from the voice’s memory of the present situation and in actuality, the voice had only thought he seen this man do this (“I think I caught your eyes”) and subsequently defines the scenario as nothing had been said “but in the room, all that was heard was the TV droning, the air pump, hissing, at intervals, and the clock clicking away each second with tedious precision”