The final eight lines are the most important of the poem, they sum up the theme and explain why the boy is hurting so much and how it links to Jessica. It also exposes what the father is like.
“’A girl at school called Jessica,
She hurts-‘ he touched himself between
The heart and stomach ‘-she has been
Aching here and I can see her’.
Nothing I had read or heard
Instructed me in what to do.
I covered him and stroked his head.
‘The pain will go, in time’ I said.”
In the second to fourth line the little boy tells his father what is wrong, except he uses Jessica to explain the pain he feels. The little boy has fallen in love with ‘Jessica’ and is feeling heart ache. The line ‘I can see her’ shows how strong the little boy’s emotions are towards the girl because he is now visualising her.
In the last four lines it shows the father’s emotions about the situation his son is in. The lines
‘Nothing I had read or heard
Instructed me in what to do.
I covered him and stroked his head.’
Shows that the father is not prepared for his son to fall in love, he is still learning about looking after his son and in fact is still growing up himself. The only thing the father could do was to simply try and comfort his son by tucking him back into bed and stroking his head. These gestures also show how much the father loves his son and shows how he feels helpless in the situation.
The poem ends with a very true statement about crushes and love.
‘‘The pain will go, in time’ I said.’
The poet uses poetic devices such as metaphors, alliteration and personification to help the reader to identify with the boy. In the beginning of the poem his use of alliteration ‘The boy was barely five years old’ , ‘And left him there to learn the names’ and ‘Of flowers in jam jars on the sill’ shows the innocence of the young boy. By the poet using a metaphor and personification in the following quote ‘The darkness whimpered’ the reader gets the impression that the innocent world of the boy has been disrupted.
The whole theme of the poem is about falling in love and how growing up is painful which refers back to the title of the poem ‘Growing pain’. It reminds the reader of an innocent time that we all enjoyed when we were young, but life’s experiences changes this for us during our journey into adulthood.
I am now going to compare ‘Growing Pain’ with the poem ‘The Toys’ by Coventry Patmore.
The structure of ‘The Toys’ is one long stanza as is the poem ‘Growing Pain’. The poet is also writing the poem through the father’s point of view, like ‘Growing Pain’.
In the first six lines of the poem the tone is quite different to the beginning tone of ‘Growing Pain’. The first tone of this poem is a negative one. The father is punishing his son for doing something wrong. This does not have the same initial sense of innocence that we see in ‘Growing Pains’.
“My little son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,
I struck him, and dismiss’d
With hard words and unkiss’d,
His mother, who was patient, being dead.”
In the first two lines we find out, like in ‘Growing Pain’, that the son is little. However, unlike ‘Growing Pain’ we do not find out the age the little boy is, instead it is suggested that the boy is mature and intelligent.
‘who look’d from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise’
In the sixth line it tells us his mother is dead which suggests that this may have robbed the boy of his innocence and that this is why he may be more mature.
In the third and fourth lines the reader finds out that the son has disobeyed a rule for the seventh time and that the father had struck him as punishment and sent him away without a kiss. The sixth line also suggests to the reader that the mother was the patient parent and the father is quicker tempered. This is different to ‘Growing Pain’ where the father appears patient and sensitive.
In the next seven lines, the tone of the poem changes to the father feeling guilty for being so harsh on his son.
“Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet,
From his late sobbing wet,
And I, with a moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;”
In the second to fourth lines there are quite a few comparisons between the poem ‘Growing Pain’ and this one. The line ‘I visited his bed’ is the same as in ‘Growing Pain’. Both fathers go visit their sons in their bed, In ‘Growing Pain’ the little boy is awake and distressed, but in ‘The Toys’ the boy is asleep although it is obvious to the father that his son was upset before sleeping.
In the sixth and seventh lines the reader sees the father’s feelings of guilt because he punished his son. The line which really shows this is
‘Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;’
It shows the reader that the father is just as upset as the son and as he kisses away the son’s tears away he begins to cry. This makes the reader feel sympathetic towards the father.
In the next eight lines the poet tells us about the small collection of things which the boy has arranged on his bed side table. This section of lines from the poem all relate back to the title of the poem ‘The Toys’ since they are the boy’s toys, his private collection of things.
“For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.”
The seventh and eighth lines show the reader that the little boy carefully arranged these items by his bed side which show that they are very important to him; it also shows the reader that they have much sentimental value to him and comfort him when he is sad. The poet uses alliteration ‘And six or seven shells’, A bottle with bluebells’ to help emphasise their importance.
In the final twelve lines of the poem, the father prays to God since he is very distressed about upsetting his son.
“So when that night I pray’d
To God I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie tranced breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood,
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
‘I will be sorry for their childishness’.”
In the second and third lines the father asks God what happens when people die. This may be because he is referring back to the death of his wife, he may have seen his son crying and it made him think of his wife.
In the fifth and sixth line, the poet uses ‘toys’ as a metaphor for pointing out that we put importance on little things when they are not that important, such as toys.
In the final four lines of the poem, the poet makes some very important religious and intelligent statements. ‘Then fatherly not less’, the language used by the poet shows that God is a father figure here. In the last two lines the poet uses a metaphor to show that God is the father and that we are all his children.
‘Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay’
In the last line is the most important religious statement of the whole poem, it sums up the whole theme of the poem.
‘I will be sorry for their childishness’
The poet yet again uses the little boy as a metaphor for human kind. What the poet actually means is that humans disobey God, which is shown through the little boy disobeying his father. The father also asks in this line to be forgiven by God for not being forgiving towards his son like God would have done.
The theme of the poem refers back to the title, ‘The Toys’, this is because the boy’s toys makes the father realise his own wrong doings.
The final poem I am going to compare with ‘Growing Pain’ and ‘The Toys’ is ‘Little Boys Crying’ by Mervyn Morris.
Like both poems ‘Growing Pain’ and ‘The Toys’, the poet is once again the father. It is also about the poet’s son crying which both ‘Growing Pain’ and ‘The Toys’ have in their theme. The poem ‘Little Boy Crying’ unlike ‘Growing Pain’ and ‘The Toys’ has the structure of three stanzas, all which have different themes to them.
In the first stanza of the poem, the theme is literally about how the little boy in this poem is behaving.
“Your mouth contorting in brief spite and
Hurt, your laughter metamorphosed into howls,
Your frame so recently relaxed now tight
With three-year old frustration, your bright eyes
Swimming tears, splashing your bare feet,
You stand there angling for a moment’s hint
Of guilt or sorrow for the quick slap struck”
In the first line of this stanza we see the contrast of the boys between ‘Growing Pain’ and ‘The Toys’. The little boy in this poem is bitter and nasty at the moment, using tears for attention. He is at the age where they throw tantrums simply to get attention, they are very manipulative. The poet uses onomatopoeia ‘howls’, ‘splashing’ and ‘slap’ to emphasise the child’s behaviour. This is very unlike the boys in the other two poems since they were crying because they were actually hurt and upset, unlike the boy in this poem.
In the second line of the first stanza the poet tells us of how the expression of the boy’s face has changed in a moment however instead of just saying ‘changed’ though for the boy’s expression, the poet uses good language and says ‘metamorphosed’.
In the third and fourth line of the first stanza the poet tells the reader how the little boy’s faces changes expression so quickly, he also tells us the age of the boy because he says ‘three-year-old frustration’. The poet shows us the contrast of the boys expressions by saying ‘recently relaxed now tight’ which suggests to the reader that the little boy changed his expression very quickly.
In the fifth line of the first stanza we know that the little boy is throwing a tantrum because the poet tells the reader that he is crying a lot. ‘Swimming tears, splashing your bare feet.’
In the final two lines of the first stanza the poet shows us the manipulative behaviour of the little boy.
‘You stand there angling for a moment’s hint’
The poet uses a metaphor here, saying that the little boy is fishing for something to show that the father is feeling guilty for what he did to the little boy. This links to the finishing line.
‘Of guilt or sorrow for the quick slap struck.’
This tells the reader that the little boy in this poem is cunning and looking for emotions from his father to use against him. There is also a comparison in this last line to ‘The Toys’ because both father’s have struck their sons.
In the second stanza of the poem is written through the boy’s eyes. The poet/father knows how the boy feels which makes the poem very clever and does not only show the point of view of the father unlike ‘Growing Pain’ and ‘The Toys’ but also the view of the child.
“The ogre towers above you, that grim giant,
Empty of feeling, a colossal cruel,
Soon victim of the tale’s conclusion, dead
At last. You hate him, you imagine
Chopping clean the tree he’s scrambling down
Or plotting deeper pits to trap him in.”
In the first line of the second stanza there are two metaphors, the little boy is comparing his father to fairytale villains such as giants and ogres, creatures which are really horrible, this shows how the poet understands how the little boy sees his father at that moment in time. The poet also uses alliteration to make these mythical creatures clearer in the readers mind ‘grim giant’ and ‘colossal cruel’.
In the second line the little boy thinks the father has no feeling ‘empty of feeling’, he thinks that the father does not care that he struck him which makes the son angrier at the father. You can really see the anger of the son in the third line of the stanza when he wishes his father dead, ‘Soon the victim of the tale’s conclusion, dead’.
In the final two lines of the stanza the little boy plots to kill his father. They relate back to the fairytale of ‘Jack in the beanstalk’ which shows the little boy’s youth because he is comparing ideas to a fairytale, as well as the characters he is calling his father, which relates back to the first line of the stanza.
In the third and final stanza is again looking through the father’s eyes. It reveals how the father wants to show his son emotion but is not confident. The poet/father is being direct to the little boy.
“You cannot understand, not yet,
The hurt your easy tears can scald him with,
Nor guess the wavering hidden behind that mask.
This fierce man longs to lift you, curb your sadness
With piggy-back or bull-fight, anything,
But dare not ruin the less you should learn.
You must not male a plaything of the rain.”
In the first line of the final stanza the poet tells the little boy that he cannot understand why he is punishing him or what he is talking about. The poet also talks about the future ‘not yet’, that in the future the little boy will understand why the father acted in this way but he is too young at the moment.
In the second line the father tells the little boy that the crocodile/fake tears that the little boy cries hurts the father.
In the third line the father admits to the little boy that he hides his feelings, he uses a metaphor of a mask to show how he hides his emotions, ‘hidden behind that mask.’
In the final three lines of the final stanza the father admits what he really wants to do with the little boy instead of punishing him. The father tells the little boy that though he may act fierce he really wants to hold his son, cuddle him, and play games with him. The only reason he does not do this is so that the little boy learns his lesson about what is right and wrong, he has to teach him this lesson.
In the final line of the poem there is a dramatic gap between this line and the finishing line of the final stanza. This is because it is the most important line from the whole poem, the poet uses ‘rain’ as a metaphor and symbol of tears and sadness. He is telling the little boy that he must not use tears and emotions to get what he wants. This is the theme of the poem, that the little boy does do this and that the father is punishing him to teach him not to use these emotions to get what he wants.
In conclusion, I have chosen these three poems because I think they had the most in common. They all had little boy’s crying in them, though only in ‘The Toys’ and ‘Little Boy Crying’ did the little boy’s cry because they were being punished. I also chose these three poems to compare because each of these poems finished with a moral for the reader.
I preferred ‘Little Boy Crying’ because the poem was told from both the father’s and boy’s point of view. I learnt that when a parent punishes a child, they suffer too. They are sad at making their child cry and carry guilt for their actions. I can understand how distressing it is for a child when they think their parent is angry with them. As a child you worry that your parent no longer loves you and are afraid that they may not want you around anymore. As you grow older you begin to understand that punishment can come from love and that a parents actions in this area is not a sign that they no longer love you.
