In The Stolen Child, William Butler Yeats illustrates the supernatural world he has created by describing the romantic and peaceful scenarios. In this faery world, every creature shares a harmonious environment. Yeats introduces the beauty of nature in first three stanzas, while he returns to the situations of the modern society in the last stanza. For instance, the mice spin around because they do not have any available food to feed themselves, and human beings are anxious while they are sleeping. Compared with the complicated world of human beings, the faery world seems like the carefree and idealistic paradise. Even though the child is stolen by the faery, this child can enjoy his life in the faery world created by Yeats, rather than …show more content…
“[The] brown mice” (line 48) spin around because there are no available foods to fill their hungry stomachs. On the other hand, human beings probably are short of food supplies as well. Fortunately, when the innocent child goes away with the faery, he or she would not face the starvation anymore. The peaceful faery land, therefore, is extremely appealing to the little child and human beings. However, in the noisy secular world, there are the sounds of “the claves on the warm hillside” (line 45), “the kettle on the hob”(line 46), which “[sing] peace into his breast” (line 47). All the descriptions in Yeats’s The Stolen Child are more or less paradoxical, for there are dangers lurked in the peaceful faery world and the chaotic reality at the same time. There is scarce quietness. The two different worlds are progressively overlapping. Addtionally, when the faery and the child finally are leaving hand in hand, his eyes are solemn. This different expression in his eyes signifies the lost of innocence. At the end of the poem, Yeats does not offer the reader the ending of this little child, who is no longer innocent, and nobody knows whether he is dead, or switched by the fairies, or became a little idiot. This wordless ending leaves the reader to imagine and to ponder the unveiled truth of the faery
Lewis could have used more elaborate words when describing the children’s state, but her description of the children as “laughing” and “wet” evokes a pleasant simplicity that is associated with childhood. The fact that the children come from playing in a river is an idyllic interaction heightens the poem’s connection to the natural world. The line that follows, “And all goes on as it should,” lends to the peaceful, idyllic tone in the poem. For the speaker, everything (“all”) is right in the
Stanza two shows us how the baby is well looked after, yet is lacking the affection that small children need. The child experiences a ‘vague passing spasm of loss.’ The mother blocks out her child’s cries. There is a lack of contact and warmth between the pair.
The fact that they feel they can sit about the knee of their mother, in this stereotypical image of a happy family doesn’t suggest that the children in this poem are oppressed... ... middle of paper ... ... y has a negative view of the childish desire for play which clearly has an effect on the children. The fact that they the are whispering shows that they are afraid of the nurse, and that they cannot express their true thoughts and desires freely, which is why they whisper, and therefore shows that Blake feels that children are oppressed. I feel that the two poems from innocence which are ‘The Echoing Green,’ and ‘The Nurses Song,’ display Blake’s ideological view of country life which I referred to in my introduction, and show his desire for childhood to be enjoyed.
Starting with the first stanza, Blake creates a dark and depressing tone. He uses words such as died, weep, soot, and cry to support this tone. In the first two lines the child shares his family with us, stating his mother’s death and the fact that his father sold him sharing that the child must come from a poor background “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue”(Lines 1-2). The image of a poor child getting tossed into another unhappy place sets the tone for the beginning of this poem. Blake uses the word “weep”, instead of “sweep” in the first stanza to show the innocence of the child “Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep”(3). The fact that the child cried “weep” instead of sweep shows that the child could not be any older than four. Blake describes that they sleep in soot also meaning they are sleeping in their death bed. The average life span of children who work in chimneys is ten years due to the harsh work environment. The child portrays sorrow in the last line of the first stanza “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”(4)
"The blood-dimmed tied is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned". As many currently see our society today, Yeats was in fear of what the future had in store, and felt it necessary to warn society of their abominable behavior. All of the good in the society has been taken over and overwhelmed by the horrible actions. No longer do ceremonies, or acts of kindness, take place, which Yeats believes is a direct effect of the loss of youth and innocence. "That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle". This quote from "The Second Coming" informs the society that if they do not begin to correct their transgressions against one another as a whole they will awake the anti-Christ. The anti-Christ will come to claim his Jesus and correct the predicament that they have gotten themselves in to.
Also, in Marjie Lundstrom’s brief article entitled, Kids Are Kids-Until They Commit Crimes, she centers on the case of twelve year old Lionel Tate and his punishment for committing murder. For instance, Lundstrom states how Tate at the age of twelve savagely beat to death a young girl while he was trying to mimic one of his ‘World Wrestling Heroes” which he saw on television and at the age of fourteen became convicted as an adult of first degree murder (Lundstrom). At the time he was only twelve when he committed the crime and still to this day is getting punished for a heinous crime he committed at such a young age. Although Tate did commit a cruel crime and should receive some sort of punishment for it, the fact that he is under age should
In the United States there are approximately 397,000 children in out-of home care, within the last year there was about 640,000 children which spent at least some time in out-of-home care. More than 58,000 children living in foster care have had their biological parental rights permanently terminated (Children’s Rights, 2014). Due to the rising number of children in foster care and the growing concerns of the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and families, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 was signed into law. On November 19, 1997, President Bill Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, to improve the safety of children, to promote adoption and other permanent homes for children who need them, and to support families (Child Welfare League of America). The Adoption and Safe Families Act also promotes adoption by offering incentive payments for States. During the FY of 1999-2003 the payment to states which had exceeded the average number of adoptions received $20 million (Child Welfare League of America). The ASFA improved the existing federal child welfare law to require that the child’s health and safety be a “paramount” concern in any efforts made by the state to preserve or reunify the child’s family, and to provide new assurances that children in foster care are safe (Shuman, 2004).
Instructor’s comment: This student’s essay performs the admirable trick of being both intensely personal and intelligently literary. While using children’s literature to reflect on what she lost in growing up, she shows in the grace of her language that she has gained something as well: an intelligent understanding of what in childhood is worth reclaiming. We all should make the effort to find our inner child
Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, which in this case substitutes the narrator as well, the author depicts the majestic life of those who, by pure coincidence or happenstance, were born more advantageously than the rest of society. Their life is full of riches and placed in a fairy tale decorous. However, despite all that, their life is not a fairy tale in the least. On the contrary, it is far from that.
In the stage being the first stanza of the poem Child and Insect the reader meets a little boy who is excited and euphoric because he has managed to catch a grasshopper. The rhythm of the poem is very fast and lively. An evidence for that is the onomatopoeia “clockwork fizz” which describes the insect’s movements as sudden and quick, comparing its legs to the hands of a clock too. It also illustrates its desperate attempts to escape the small palm of the boy described by the opening line of the first stanza “He cannot hold his hand huge enough.” Furthermore, not only the grasshopper’s movements are swift but the boy’s motions as well, shown by the run on line “He races back, how quick he is, look”. This line further emphasizes the rhythm of the poem and the energetic mood it creates. The run on line could also be interpreted as a representation of the child’s speech which is cut and uneven because of his cheerfulness and need for a breath. Moreover, the word choices of the author particularly words such as “snatched”, “quick”, “look”, “sudden” help to reinf...
...turn” in the last two lines. Clare presents a different impression from the rest of the poem as indicated by a period before these two lines. The natural life of the farm is disrupted by the water, pebbles, and the cesspools in line 14. The “cesspools glittered in the sun” is an unusual image because normally cesspools are dirty tanks, but here is is “glittered.” Clare might illustrates the idea that one person might see something beautiful that the other does not; there are always different points of view. As the observer watches the mouse and interacts with the environment, he becomes involved in shaping the world. Life is unexpected and keeps changing; the life of nature may be different from human life. The last line and the sonnet(presents love and appreciation of both world) suggest that they can be unified just as the “cesspools” are unified with “glittered.”
Though written only two years after the first version of "The Shadowy Waters", W.B. Yeats' poem "Adam's Curse" can be seen as an example of a dramatic transformation of Yeats' poetic works: a movement away from the rich mythology of Ireland's Celtic past and towards a more accessible poesy focused on the external world. Despite this turn in focus towards the world around him, Yeats retains his interest in symbolism, and one aspect of his change in style is internalization of the symbolic scheme that underlies his poetry. Whereas more mythological works like "The Shadowy Waters" betray a spiritual syncretism not unlike that of the Golden Dawn, "Adam's Curse" and its more realistic fellows offer a view of the world in which symbolic systems are submerged, creating an undercurrent of meaning which lends depth to the outward circumstances, but which is itself not immediately accessible to the lay or academic reader. In a metaphorical sense, then, Yeats seems in these later poems to achieve a doubling of audience, an equivocation which addresses the initiate and the lay reader simultaneously.
Both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience provide social criticism on the dangers that child chimney sweepers endure but, Songs of Experience provides better social commentary as Songs of Experience directly identifies the potential for death unlike Songs of Innocence which implicitly identifies the dangers child sweeps endure. In Songs of Innocence, the child chimney sweeper dreams that while he was “lock’d up in coffins of black…an Angel who had a bright key… open’d the coffins…set them all free” (Blake, “Innocence” 12-14). The child’s dream of freedom appears happy and optimistic when in reality it is quite chilling that the child views death as freedom. Blake presents the child chimney sweeper as optimistic to suggest that society needs to help the children find freedom so they do not wish to die. The social commentary in Songs of Innocence is implicit in order to emphasize the child’s inability to fully understand and c...
In the poem, Introduction (Songs of Innocence) we immediately encounter the distinct use of ‘happy’ diction. Words such as ‘pleasant’, ‘glee’...
In An Abandoned Bundle, Mtshali recounts his discovery of an abandoned child, on faeces and garbage, attacked by wild dogs. Mtshali begins the poem with very soothing image of “morning mist” over a “white city”, however this is quickly distorted by the harsh, graphic simile