What is the theme of the poem "Among School Children"?
The nature of change is a common refrain in Yeats's poetry, especially in his later ones as he became acutely aware of the onset of old age, which forced him to confront his sense of mortality. In “Among the School Children”, the speaker, who's clearly Yeats himself, finds himself reflecting on his younger years and how he's changed since then. The presence of children provides the catalyst for these ruminations, forcing Yeats to come to grips with the passage of time.
But it is easier said than done for Yeats to accommodate himself to the aging process. Mainly, this is because he still feels a certain void at the heart of his existence due to his unrequited love for Maude Gonne, the woman who turned down his offers of marriage on numerous occasions. As a consequence of this, Yeats feels that his life is essentially unfulfilled. And as he muses...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
on the future of the children in the school he wonders whether the same thing might happen to them when they get older. Perhaps they too will find it difficult to deal with the change that will inevitably befall them.
In any case, Yeats resolutely refuses to succumb to self-pity. He tries to make light of his situation, referring to himself as a “comfortable kind of old scarecrow.” Ultimately, Yeats finds some degree of comfort in the assertion of his artistic persona. The only way that we can avoid a sense that our lives have been wasted is to express our being in some way, just as the dancer does in the dance.
References
What is the main idea of the poem "Among School Children"?
The main idea of this very complex poem is the ultimate unity of body and soul. In Western philosophy, it has been common to separate the two. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato provides the most famous example in this regard. He argued that the soul was somehow more real than the body; it was eternal, whereas the body was prone to aging, illness, and decay. Yeats disagrees with this, and takes Plato to task for regarding nature as nothing more than the frothy foam on the ocean of life:
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays/Upon a ghostly paradigm of things
For Yeats, life is much more complex than Plato and other philosophers would have us believe. Life is full of opposites, and yet a basic, primordial unity still remains. The whole of reality is composed of many parts, but the whole is very much greater than the sum of those parts. A chestnut tree, for example, doesn't simply consist in leaf, blossom, or trunk, but a unity of all three. And that unity is the spirit of the tree, the thing that gives the tree its life.
As with much of Yeats's poetry, "Among School Children" deals with the issue of aging. But unlike Plato and many others before him, Yeats makes no effort to separate the body from the soul. It doesn't matter whether we're eminent Greek philosophers, little babies bouncing on our mothers' knees, or famous Irish poets, old age comes to us all eventually, and it is pointless mourning the inevitable loss of youth and beauty. The soul should not be tortured over the state of the body, and vice versa. They exist together in a state of harmony, just as the bodily movements of the dancer are at one with the dancer herself:
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
References