'Propped between trees and water,'
Gives the reader the impression of loneliness and the hunchback decollates to everyone, a feature who is mocked and spurred for being different. Thomas shows how the hunchback is a mockery to everyone, a sad man who everyone is scared to talk to, however not too scared to tease.
The boys who go to the park everyday always taunt the hunchback, shout his name out and hide afterwards. However there is never any real intention in playing these pranks made by the kids. They pursue their natural instincts and the hunchback is their prey. Their cruelty is part of their adolescence, their natural response to the hunchback. In which is naïve. The hunchback suffers while these children play their nasty tricks on him. The relationship between the children and the hunchback is like a dog playing with a cat they tease him, running out of sound, watching his hopeless attempts at revenge. He is left waving his newspaper which contained his bread. Here is the poignancy. The poet evokes our pity through the image of him standing waving, trying to regain some dignity.
Throughout the poem the poet explains the taunts that the hunchback goes through made by the oblivious children
“Laughing when he shook his paper”
The ignorant boys don’t understand the mockery they are making of the hunchback and the effect it could have on his emotions as they don’t understand because they are unaware at that age.
A contrast of the hunchback and freedom is mentioned in the second stanza by the poet.
“Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship”
In this part of the poem the poet tries to convey the idea of the hunchback being dehumanised because of his deformity and being part of the scenery like the trees and bushes. This is a contrast of the hunchback who’s trapped within his body and the image of freedom is given off. Being free like the water where he sailed his ship. The hunchback is trapped within a body he would probably like to escape from but he can’t.
When in the third stanza, we can see how he does not interact with people or society; he in fact runs away or turns his back towards them. We, the reader depict an image of someone who no longer is a normal person, but someone who differs, and is known locally as a feature to the park where his presence is always there.
The park becomes a zoo as the boys hide in the willow groves camouflage. Thomas presents the idea of contained wildness and is emphasises in the metaphor:
‘Made tigers jump out of their eyes’
This suggests the fear they present just through their look. However that they play hide and seek reminds us that they are still children. This poem draws a picture of isolation, also on the park keeper who becomes another prop, invisible because of this regular appearance at the park. The only person who recognises the isolation seems to be the childlike figure of the poet.
‘In the fountain basin where I sailed my ships’
The thought created is of a boy who stands outside the activity of the truant boys. He plays by himself and seems isolated from the other children.
The final two stanzas of the poem takes us into the mind of the ‘old dog sleeper’ as he makes himself in this imaginative world to watch over him in the dark hence the tall straight young elm made from his crooked bones. For a moment he stops being between things or people and he is the central figure in the scene he creates.
We get the impression that the hunchback would prefer to have someone who could help and care for him. . It may be that the hunchback he had one to look after him,
'A woman figure without fault,'
Someone just perfect who could stay a keep him company after the 'locks and chains.' Probably this woman was his saviour, someone who could help him escape from his torturing reality. To him she was perfect. All he really needed was love and devotion from someone and he thought that this ‘woman figure’ was it.
Throughout the poem the reader has extracts which help convey the loneliness and isolation felt by the hunchback in the park. Thomas has conveyed this mans isolation from the normality of a community very well. He has shown and described how the man is like a feature to the park, who Is mocked and marred daily by those who expect to see him. Someone who can no longer interact with others, rather than when it is him being scorned. Thomas excels in making the reader pity the hunchback, and showing the true extent of his unhappiness and differences, using a variety of splendid phrases to create the surreal and sad atmosphere surrounding this very isolated man.