"The Leap" by James Dickey

{Author Bio}
James Dickey was an American poet and novelist  who was appointed the eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the library of congress in 1966. He also recieved the Order of the South Award. He was born on February 2, 1923 and died on January 19,1997.

The only thing I have of Jane MacNaughton                                  

Is one instant of a dancing-class dance.                                  

She was the fastest runner in the seventh grade,                                             

My scrapbook says, even when boys were beginning

To be as big as the girls.                                                                        

But I do not have her running in my mind,

Though Frances Lane is there, Agnes Fraser,

Fat Betty Lou Black in the boys-against-girls

Relays we ran at recess:  she must have run                                 

Like the other girls, with her skirts tucked up                                         

So they would be like bloomers,

But I cannot tell; that part of her is gone.

What I do have is when she came,

With the hem of skirt where it should be

For a young lady, into the annual dance                                                 

Of the dancing class we all hated, and with a light

Grave leap, jumped up and touched the end

Of one of the paper-ring decorations

To see if she could reach it.  She could,

And reached me now as well, hanging in my mind                                  

From a brown chain of brittle paper, thin

And muscular, wide-mouthed, eager to prove

Whatever it proves when you leap

In a new dress, a new womanhood, among the boys

Whom you easily left in the dust                                                            

Of the passionless playground.  If I said I saw

In the paper where Jane MacNaughton Hill,

Mother of four, leapt to her death from a window

Of a downtown hotel, and that her body crushed in

The top of a parked taxi, and that I held                                                            

Without trembling a picture of her lying cradled

In that papery steel as though lying in the grass,

One shoe idly off, arms folded across her breast,

I would not believe myself.  I would say

The convenient thing, that it was a bad dream                                        

Of Maturity, to see that eternal process

Most obsessively wrong with the world

Come out of her light, earth-spurning feet

Grown heavy:  would say that in the dusty heels                        

Of the playground some boy who did not depend                                              

On speed of foot, caught and betrayed her.

Jane, stay where you are in my first mind:

It was odd in that school, at that dance,

I and the other slow-footed yokels sat in corners

Cutting rings out of drawing paper                                                         

Before you leapt in your new dress

And touched the end of something I began,

Above the couples struggling on the floor,

New men and women clutching at each other

And prancing foolishly as bears:  hold on                                               

To that ring I made for you, Jane --

My feet are nailed to the ground

By dust I swallowed thirty years ago --

While I examine my hands.

In James Dickey's poem, the "leap"symbolizes courage, confidence, maturity, and achievement. This vision that the speaker has of Jane reaching up to touch the paper chain represents all the attributes that he admires in Jane and all the characteristics he would like to obtain also. Jane was different from her other classmates and the speaker saw this. He admired her for that. We see the symbolisim of maturity when the speaker states,"eager to prove whatever it proves when you leap in a new dress, a new womanhood". This pivotal moment is similar to a another moment in Jane's life but is much more tragic. Instead of whimisically leaping to touch a paper chain, she leaps out of her apartment building. The leap as a child was an upwards leap to curiosity and astonishment. The leap of her death was a downwards leap and must of been a leap of despair. It is ironic how different the leaps are. The first leap symbolizes aspiration while the second leap symbolizes despair and frustration. The speaker wishes to only remember the first leap. Jane was, to him, a dream from the moment he saw her at the dance. The picture of her "lying cradled in that papery steel" is a nightmare. 

The chain also symbolizes the one connection they had with each other. He never got to approach her and give her his ring that he made for her but she reached to touch the chain that he had made and that represents linkage. It links them together. It is ironic because chains usually hold things down but Jane leaps to touch the chain. In her second leap though, something must had "chained" her down which caused her to leap to her death.