Stephen Spender Stephen spender biography 1909 1995 English
Stephen Spender
Stephen spender biography 1909 -1995 English poet and essayist. Famous collections: ‘poems of dedication’, ‘the edge of being’, world within world’. He interest in socialist and pacifist: his main theme is about social injustice and class inequalities.
An elementary school classroom in a slum Far from gusty (blowing strong) waves these children’s faces. Like rootless weeds (useless, wild), the hair torn around their pallor (pale). The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper. Seeming (lean, thin) boy, with rat’s eyes. They stunted (under developed), unlucky heir Of twisted bones, reciting a father’s gnarled (knotty) disease, His lesson from his desk. At back of the dim (dark) class One unnoted (not noticed), sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream, Of squirrel’s game, in the tree room, other than this. Repetition in ‘far’ to stress on the distance. simile: children are compared with rootless weed Metaphor: boy is as thin as paper. Juxtaposition between the gloomy classroom and the outside nature. Marxist theory and feminism in the example of tall girl.
Stanza 2 On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare’s head, Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities. Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley (valley in Austria). Open-handed map Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these Children, these windows, not this world, are world, Where all their future’s painted with a fog, A narrow street sealed in with a lead (bluish) sky, Far from rivers, capes and stars of words. Metaphor: 1. wall are portrayed to be dull as sour as cream. 2. The future of those kids is limited in the ‘narrow street sealed with a lead sky’. Allusion: 1. Shakespeare 2. Tyrolese valley Assonance of sound ‘e’ Repetition of word ‘far’ Archetypal theory-stars of words
Stanza 3 Surely, Shakespeare is wicked and the map a bad example With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal— For lives that slyly turn in their cramped (narrow) holes From fog endless night? On their slag (waste material) heap, these children Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones. All of their time and space are foggy slum. So blot their maps with slums as big as doom (disaster). Alliteration in ‘f’: monotonous life Metaphor: their home are very small like cramped holes Simile: their repaired spectacles like bottle bits on stones. Archetypal: ships, sun, love
Stanza 4 Unless, governor, inspector, visitor, This map becomes their window and these windows That shut upon their lives like catacombs (tomb), Break O break open till they break the town And show the children green fields, and make their world Run azure (deep blue) on gold sands, and let their tongues Run naked into books the white and green leaves open History theirs whose language is the sun. Anaphora in word ‘run’: call on governor to set those children free in the natural world. Metaphor to portray book pages into leaves. Indicating the writer wants those children to learn in nature instead of leaning from the book.
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