One theme in “Elegy for the Native Guards” is an examination of loss and remembrance. Loss operates on several levels. The first level is the idea of the “dead” (Line 6), as the dead lost their lives and the living lost those who died. On another level, corpses buried on Ship Island were displaced, or lost, by the hurricane. Trethewey twice repeats the word “lost,” referencing both lives of people and bodies swept out into the Gulf. The ranger guiding the tour of the island refers to the “graves lost” (Line 9). In the final stanza, “lost” is part of a compound word, “water-lost” (Line 20), further linking the dead bodies to the sea.

The living generally remember the dead not by looking at corpses or bones, but by viewing objects that mark gravesites. Trethewey discusses the “grave markers” and “crude headstones” (Line 19) that were taken out to sea with the dead. Culturally speaking, the manners by which people treat their dead—in funeral rites and graveyards—is significant. These practices are not only about sanitation and proper disposal of remains, but also about how people remember those who are lost. As places of remembrance, gravesites are meant to exist after the individual has passed, offering a designated space for the living to visit.