by Stephen Spender
A moving verse on pitiful conditions of slum children, their bleak future, and a shimmer of hope.
“A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky...”
Answer the following questions:
1)
(a) The tall girl with her head weighed down means
The girl (i) is ill and exhausted.
(b) The paper-seeming boy with rat’s eyes means
The boy is (ii) thin, hungry and weak.
(c) The stunted, unlucky heir of twisted bones means
The boy (i) has an inherited disability.
(d) His eyes live in a dream, A squirrel’s game, in the tree room other than this means the boy is (i) full of hope in the future.
(e) The children’s faces are compared with ‘rootless weeds’. This means they (ii) are ill-fed.
2) What do you think is the colour of ‘sour cream’? Why do you think the poet has used this expression to describe the classroom walls?
‘Sour cream’ colour is a dull or off-white colour. When some of the food items are degraded, they taste sour. When the white colour undergoes degradation like rancidity, the walls get discoloured and become creamish in color. Here, by this image, the poet wants to relate the situation of the slum children with such a degradation, carelessness and neglect. Just like the walls, they are also not taken care of and their future seems dark and foggy.
3) The walls of the classroom are decorated with the pictures of ‘Shakespeare’, ‘buildings with domes’, ‘world maps’ and beautiful valleys. How do these contrast with the world of these children? OR Why is Shakespeare wicked and world map a bad example for the slum children?
The situation of these slum children is so bad that they may not be getting quality education. Nobody cares about them. They might not even know the English alphabet or simple words properly. It is pointless to have the portrait of William Shakespeare in the classroom. They would not even know who he is and what his great works are.
The world map is a bad example because it shows the places which these children do not know anything about or where they are unlikely to go. Further, the map does not show their slum. It is not their world there on the map. It is what they look through the window, their slum, is their actual world.
Moreover, there are pictures of beautiful places and building with domes. It is highly unlikely that these children would ever see these places in real life. In contrast, what they see daily is the streets sealed with dark, hopeless and gloomy sky, and their unclean slum neighborhood.
4) What does the poet want for the children of the slums? How can their lives be made to change?
The poet wants the governors, inspectors and visitors to take initiatives and bring these children out of their miserable situation. The poet wants these people to take care of these children’s education, provide them with enough resources and opportunities, and guide them to the real path of light so that their future can be bright.
5) Discuss the puns used in the poem.
i) reciting a father’s gnarled disease,
His lesson, from his desk.
The pun in the word ‘recite’ means that the boy is reciting his lesson from his desk, and he is also carrying forward or repeating the same disease his father had. He has inherited this deformity.
ii) At back of the dim class
Here, the poet has used a pun with the word ‘dim’. By this, he means that the class is poorly ventilated and does not have enough light. Further, he also means that the students of the class are not so intelligent, but dim-witted.
iii) So blot their maps with slums as big as doom
The poet mentioned that the world map was a bad example for these children as it had the places which they had never seen or the places they would never go to. Further, it did not have their slum on that map too. The poet wants to mark a point on the map where their slum is so that the map becomes meaningful to them. However, the pun with the word ‘blot’ means that any slum is kind of a blemish or stain on the face of the Earth. Among all the human achievements, the fact that we have been unable to eradicate poverty and slums ruins the whole image.
Poem Analysis:
* Rhyme Scheme:
The poem has no rhyme scheme. However, it follows a metrical structure to some extent with most of the lines being pentameter or hexameter. Therefore, the poem is blank verse.
* Figures of Speech:
1) Metaphor:
- The paper-seeming boy
- sour cream
- Future painted with fog
- A narrow street sealed in with lead sky
- stars of words
- From fog to endless night
- History is theirs whose language is the sun
- This map becomes their window
2) Simile:
- Like rootless weeds
- like bottle bits on stones
- these windows that shut upon their lives like catacombs
- slums as big as doom
3) Personification:
- civilized dome riding all cities
- skins peeped through by bones
4) Repetition:
- far far from
- Awarding the world its world
- This map becomes their window and these windows
- Break o break
5) Alliteration:
- far far from
- street sealed
- spectacles of steel
- bottle bits
6) Transferred epithet:
- civilized dome
7) synecdoche:
- His eyes live in a dream
8) Pun:
- reciting a father's gnarled disease, His lesson from his desk
- At back of the dim class
- So blot their maps with slums as big as doom
9) Juxtaposition / contrast:
- pictures, map and portraits hung on the walls do not match the surroundings in which they are.
10) Symbolism:
- 'sun' symbolizes light and hope
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