Consistent with his reputation as the pioneer of “Romantic” writing, Scottish Bard Robert Burns wrote this piece from a woman’s point of view, to show affection as the wife or lover of John Anderson. This is a romantic love that compares his aging, deteriorating looks with that of his younger self. She remembers with gladness the comely lad he was then and proceeds to reminisce of the times and struggles they had gone through together. Burns ends the poem with the promise of the wife that, come what may, they will be together forever. This poem is an example of “restricted poetry” because Burns only talks of one experience. The theme is purely and simply the love and intimacy between John Anderson and his spouse.
The persona of the poem is the wife or the lover of John Anderson. This is evident not only in the title – “jo” is Scottish and Burns often wrote in a mixture that others around Britain could understand – but also in the words used that bore a hint of intimacy. The poem structure is balanced by having both stanzas divide into two parts. The first stanza alternates remembrances of their youth with appearance and action in old age. In the second stanza, Burns transitions from the glory of youth to eventual death. The progress of the poem is slow and produces a sense of melancholy grace towards the end.
On the surface, the poem expresses the thoughts of a wife as she and her spouse near the end of their lives together. She remembers the times, good or bad, that they spent together. Burns shows through this poem how people change through the trials of time by juxtaposing the contrast between dark good looks fading to grayness and thick heads of hair becoming receding hairlines to mark the inevitable march of time.
In a deeper sense, Burns demonstrates the loyalty of the wife to her husband. Even in old age, love is still there though they have gone through a lot. The hill in the poem represents many things: the obstacles they hurdled as a couple and transitions in life. The climb to the top of the hill symbolizes vigorous youth while the descent depicts degeneration into old age and eventual death. Burns uses a line that showed the utmost loyalty of the wife to her spouse. “And sleep thegither at the foot” insinuates the idea that even in death, the couple will still be together.
Burns crafted a great poem by contrasting light and darkness, life and death, vibrant youth and old age, beauty and its corruption. All these elements were interconnected in the life of John Anderson and the thoughts of his spouse. Burns created striking poetry from a simple reminiscence of a wife of her husband.
The poem is stark in its simplicity but manages to convey the depth of feeling others convey in a sort of story or full-length novel. The light and darkness in constant conflict in the poem were “hidden in plain sight”, needing only the eye of insight to find it. To the casual eye, the poem is just about a reminiscing old woman, but to those who care to understand, it shows the love that binds through the changes human beings endure as they age.
All in all “John Anderson, my Jo” is a poem that impresses as a melancholy treatment of impermanence, the waning of beauty, the graying and loss of hair, the decline from once-proud stature. The poem shows that what is inside will never change, no matter what challenges come. The couple in the poem shows that though the body may wither, their love will not.