The Idiot Boy

This week's poem was The Idiot Boy. It is one of longest poems we have read this year, but it tells a very simple narrative. The narrative is about Betty and her retarded son, Johnny, trying to help out their neighbor, Susan, who has become very ill. A doctor was needed to tend to Susan and Betty had no one to send except Johnny. So she sends him off to get the doctor, but he does not return for four or five hours. Betty then becomes worried and goes off looking for Johnny. She goes to the doctor and he tells her that Johnny did not come by. Betty later finds Johnny sitting on the horse gazing at a waterfall.

In one of the footnotes of the poem, we read about how people criticized the mother in the story. The critics said her maternal fondness created "a certain degree of disgust and contempt." I can see where people can dislike the mother because of maternal fondness, but I dislike the mother for another reason. The title of the poem is The Idiot Boy and is in relation to Johnny. I personally think the title should have been about the idiot mother. to clarify, Betty goes looking for her son after he is missing for a long time. That is understandable because she is a mother and worried. So where does she go? She goes to the doctor's house and ask if he has seen her son. After hearing his response she then leaves to look for her son. So what is wrong? Her friend Susan is still sick and needed a doctor. The very same doctor that Betty just went to go see about her own son. She could have told the doctor about Susan and have him go to tend to her while she continued looking for her son. But, she forgets her main goal that night after after getting distracted with her new goal.

Frost at Midnight

Frost at Midnight is a blank verse poem written by Samuel Coleridge, and follows his train of thought one idle night while holding his young son in his arm. The poem tells of a very calm night where it is so calm that it becomes distracting after awhile. Coleridge then is reminded of past memories because it is so quiet. He starts to reminisce about his childhood when he would daydream while in school. Coleridge would daydream about his birthplace and the church bells.

This effect that the quiet has on Coleridge is similar to the effect that being out in nature and sitting on a rock had on Wordsworth. The quietness then can be seen as a therapeutic device like nature. Each setting can invoke a different sense in a person. For Coleridge, the quietness brings back memories from his childhood. I can see how Coleridge feels the way he does, because the calmness and tranquility also invokes a deep passion in me. During times of quietness like the one described in the poem, my mind is at ease and I am able to reflect on many different aspects of life.

Next, Coleridge is holding his infant son in the poem. He wishes that his son grow up with an upbringing that is in touch with nature like his friend, Wordsworth. This goes back to the idea that nature can teach a person. Coleridge is the father of this infant and is seen as the influential figure in the child's life. To teach his son the important lessons of life, Coleridge in a way wants to hand him off to the greatest teacher, nature. Coleridge just wants his son to have the best experience that he himself did not experience as a child. And nature can teach the child the appreciation that Coleridge now feels.  

Lines Left Upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree

"Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" by Wordsworth tells the story of a man who goes through a change in his v life. When the man was young, he "went forth, pure in his heart, against the taint of dissolute tongues, 'gainst jealousy, and hate, and scorn, against all enemies prepared." He was a man pure in heart when he was younger, but was not aware of what the real world was like. Once he saw all of these values that he disagrees with in his society, the man decides to separate himself from it and essentially becomes a hermit. He goes and lives in nature in solitude.

While in nature, the man experiences a feeling of "morbid pleasure" from the beauty around him in nature. His heart could not "sustain the beauty" and "the beauty still more beauteous." After seeing his surroundings, the man in my opinion becomes a little self-obsessed. He does not truly appreciate nature still in my opinion. I think he feels this great feeling because he is away from everyone else in he world he feels as though he is better because of it. But because he isolates himself, he is unable to have relationships with other people. So he is unable to feel all of the true emotions that come with nature and so he dies.

The last part of the poem tells the moral of the story which is that we need to use nature for it's correct purpose, appreciating it with our imagination and learning from it. In the end we will become a better person from it. The man in the poem used nature as a way to see how much better he was than everybody else. As a result, he did not use his imagination and see the true beauty of everything. This kind of goes along with all of the other poems that we have read that involve an isolated person such as the mariner and Harry Gill.