Family Offering Inspiration to Children - Essay Example

Family Offering Inspiration to Children The family plays a vital role in the bringing up of children. The love that exists between family members is crucial in the well-being of the child. Many times people face different challenges and it is only through inspiration and motivation that they can move on. The children further act as tool of joy even in the difficult times. America, for instance long faced racism and discrimination. The bringing up of children in such a community is a difficult thing. Parents and the family inspire children to grow focusing on their dreams. Above all there is always hope. Bringing up children in an environment that is full of social injustice can be quite difficult. Countee Cullen in her work “Incident” and e.e. Cummings in her work “in just,” takes the reader and the audience through some of the elements of child inspiration in different environments (Matthews, 19). The paper compares the works of these two poets by analyzing their details about child inspiration and up bringing. E.E. Cummings “in just” poem, on a first reading conjure up a period of childish wonder and innocence (Kennedy & Richard, 17). However, a queer, lame, goat-footed old man wanders across the poem. What is the man doing? (Cummings, 2)Does he enhance the mood of innocence or undermine it? “Just” spring and children are in front of something. Nevertheless, what are the concerns of the balloon man? The man is old depicting the opposite end of life of the children. Lame indicates his imperfection, and above that, the most shocking is that he is goat-footed. In the poem, the children abandon their games and dance or run to the whistle of the balloon man. This brings the idea of the poem being about growing. Children have to leave their childhood life behind and join the world of adults. This is normally mixed with inspiration blessings, panic and sexuality. Capital M in the poem brings the attention to the Man. Man as an adult, is the opposite of children. Children have destination to adulthood. The idea of the children leaving their games is symbolic. In real sense, it depicts the children leaving their childhood for adulthood. The poem arrives in the end, just as if the children enter adulthood. The transition period from childhood to adulthood is very crucial. The upbringing of the child can determine the future of the child. If a child is brought up responsibly, he or she is likely to be responsible in future. Parents and the family have a great role in making sure that they encourage, inspire and motivate their children to grow up as responsible people. The family acts as an example to the children. If the family behaves irresponsibly, the child is likely to take that as a normal thing and move with the same to adulthood (Kennedy & Richard, 78). The poem “in Just”, shows a familiar world of the children playing in spring (Cummings, 2). There is celebration of spring by the poet and the children it delights the children by using creative playful words, images, sound and sentence structure. However, on a different stage, the unusual language allusions and language evoke faint dangers lurking about in the pleasures and delight associated with childhood. The consequence is a deceptively multifaceted poem that Cummings commands readers to focus on common feelings and ideas in a new perspective. In a child perspective, the poem gives an apparent chronology of a normal scene in street tinged with profound, mysterious undercurrents. The perspective of the speaker is that of a child underscored by the joining names of the poet bettyandisbel and eddieandbill showing how the children can talk. Children in the poem and thriving, they balloonman inspires them to move to the next level. The children are ready to move to the next level that is adulthood and abandon their games. Cumming uses Greek satire in describing the balloonman. Incident by Countee Cullen is a clear example of understatements in literary (Jackson & Ronald, 8). The poem is a ballad of three-quatrain about the disturbance of child racial naming. The major theme of the poem involves the way some children have privilege by birth having anything they want, whereas others have to grow in poverty. Children are innocent; they cannot understand why such differences exist. The young narrator is on a public bus taking sounds and sights happily of the unfamiliar city. Stares from another boy greet him at some point. The speaker feels there is less difference between them due to closeness in age and size. The black kid smiles, since according to him the only distinction is place, the white kid is a “Baltimorean.” It is easy to breach the gap. The slur by the white child makes the narrator understand the complexity and largeness of the difference between them. Head-filled, heart-filled with glee-innocence overcomes the narrator since the phrase gives the innocent shadowy perception he has for the Baltimorean boy. His epithet one word makes an understanding of black identity nature. Cullen uses figurative language. He uses scheme of ABAA rhyme. From the poem it appears that the child of Saturday is the narrator making statements how whites’ children are more fortunate than the black children are. This means the black children have to work harder to get the things they want. Cullen’s poem is in the environment of racism (Jackson & Ronald, 9). The challenge appears to be how to bring a child in an environment of racism and where some groups are socially advantaged than the others. Acceptance is important in assisting the children to grow in any environment (Jackson & Ronald, 8). Even though in a racist society, and from poor background the child has inspiration to succeed. The black child does not see any important difference between him and the white boy until when the white boy slurs. This shows the kind of upbringing of the child. He was able to see beyond racism. Acts of racism are present as they constantly refer him as nigger. The white boy on the other hand seems to have a different king of inspiration and upbringing because he comes from a rich family and social background. This kind of inspiration seems not to care about other, especially on those perceived inferior. Both Countee Cullen and e.e. Cummings are instrumental in bringing the concept of child inspiration. The environment and the way the family inspires the child plays a significant role on how the child grows to become. Whereas the major theme in “in Just” by Cummings is the change of innocence in the kids, the major theme in “incident” by Cullen is the difference in children social life, where some grow with privileges and others are poor. Both poems are full of figures and symbols. The tone of both poems is optimistic (Matthews, 23). In “in Just”, the children left their play and ran to the balloonman. For the “incident”, it begins with an optimistic tone but turns to a depressing tone. When the boy he was eight and small, and the white boy was no bigger, the black boy smiled. This shows how the black boy was optimistic that he was going to meet a new friend who was his age mate, however the following lines turns to a depression tone. The poem further alludes how African Americans were referred as niggers by white people of all ages, even the children. The kind of inspiration to the white children from the parents is one of racist and segregation. Moreover, it is of class. While bringing up children, it is essential that families understand imminent dangers of the future and the exposure the children will get from different environments. Acts like racism that happen to children when they are still young are likely to leave scars in their lives while good acts will improve the lives of the children. Both Cummings and Cullen highlight the need for inspiration in bringing up children, who will eventually become adults, although in different perspectives. Work Cited Cummings, E. E. “in Just--.” Rpt. in Perrine’s Literature: Structure, sound, and Sense. Eds. Thomas Arp and Greg Johnson. 9th ed. Boston: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2006. 782 Jackson & Ronald L.I. "Mommy, theres a nigger at the door". Journal of Counseling and Development: JCD, 77(1), 4-6. 1999 [Available at] http://search.proquest.com/docview/219040401?accountid=108784 1999 Kennedy & Richard S. E. E. Cummings Revisited, New York: Twayne, 1994. Matthews, Timothy. Reading Apollinaire: Theories of Poetic Language. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987. Read More