In this section of my essay I will be writing about the main events that I think are important in the poem. Before the baby is born the father is very excited and happy he feels as though he was a lucky prince.
‘I were the lucky prince’
The poet is telling this in a very good way as I think he is using the write words to describe his happiness. The man is very excited about his child and really wants a son.
‘Let it be a son, a son’
When the baby is born, his wish comes true and he is told his baby is a boy. He is happy, but has not at any point hoped for a healthy baby. He does not expect the news about his son’s condition and he is distraught. The thought of his baby being Down’s syndrome has never crossed his mind. Jon Stallworthy writes this because the reader loses sympathy with the father, as he is only concerned with the sex of the baby, and not the health. It almost makes the reader believe that he does not deserve a healthy baby and perhaps this will make him less selfish in the future.
Another event, which I think is important, is when the baby is born and how the excited father feels when his baby is born and about his son being a Mongol. In this stanza he describes his son as a ‘bright farthing’. A farthing is a coin and he likens his son to this coin; brand new, untouched and precious. This tells the reader that he feels as if he is the richest man alive and he is very, very happy. The poet uses imagery to describe it.
The third event that I also think is important, is when the father is told that his son is a Mongol. At this point he is in shock and he feels the pain he describes this as a bullet hitting him hard in the chest.
‘How easily the word went in as clean as a bullet’
The poet shows us this through simile to compare the pain and shock. At this point the fathers happiness and excitement is shattered, as the child is a Mongol. I have commented about the use of I imagery and simile I am now going on to talk about the verse and rhyme structure of the poem.
John Stallworthy uses verse and rhyme structure to show his emotions. In the whole of the poem there are three parts in the first part there is no verse or rhyme structure at all. This at the start of the poem when the man is driving to the hospital he is out of breathe and excited.
In the second part of the poem is were the verse and rhyme structure starts to come in, a rhyme structure can come in any way it could be one word and then another then one more word, which rhymes with the first one, the last word will rhyme with the second word. You would use the letter
- A First word
- B Second word that rhymes with the last word
- A Third word rhymes with the first word
- B fourth word lasts with the first word
For this rhyme structure. There are many rhyme structures and could come in A,B,B,C or A,B,C,A. an example for verse and rhyme structure is a quotation with four lines that rhyme, I have left the last words that rhyme.
In A
Bullet B
Skin A
It B
The third and final structure is when the verses start to get longer, which say that the man in the poem is shocked, sad and upset that his son is a Mongol. After a while when he realises how stupid and selfish he had been he returns to the child and the mother and changes his attitude, at this point the rhyme structure is A,B,B,C it carries on like this till the end of the poem. This poem can touch a person and is very realistic it make you feel the feelings of the man.
