Summarize the poem "My Parents kept me from children who were rough" by Stephen Spender.
In everyday language, the poem 'My parents kept me from children who were rough' by Stephen Spender might go something like this (as a modern day summary:)
Title 'My parents controlled who I could hang out with'
My parents controlled who I could hang out with, especially the uneducated kids who they thought had no manner or future
That gang who shouted insults as if they were throwing stones, their clothes were cheap copy labels with no designer tags
They had the freedom of the 'hoods,' they climbed and trespassed and swam whereever they felt like it
I was more frightened of those street-wise kids than I was of wild fierce animals, their pecs like steel from pumping iron
as they pinned me down,and jailed my arms in a vice-like grip so I couldn't get up
I was scared of the brutal honesty of their stinging taunts and mocking mimicry
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I was scared of the brutal honesty of their stinging taunts and mocking mimicry
especially when they mocked my speech impediment
from behind my back
They were so agile and fast, they sprang out from their secret hideouts round the 'hood' like wolves to criticize the world the other half lives in - my world!
They showed disrespect by throwing offensive substances at me
while I pretended not to notice
hoping that, one day
they'd ask me to join their gang
but they never did.
This poem is about the differences between the classes in the Britain of Spender's day. Spender was very concerned with class and class differences and this concern shows through in the poem.
The speaker in the poem is a relatively well-off child who is in some ways jealous of the poorer kids. He sees their lives as more free than his. He also believes that they are more competent and able to deal with life than he is.
Beside them, he feels weak and incompetent. He wishes he could be like them even though he knows he is supposed to be superior.
How does the writer present the childhood experience in Stephen Spender's poem "My parents kept me away from children who were rough"?
We could argue that there are two disparate types of childhood experience presented in Spender's poem, but the perspective of the speaker only allows us full understanding of one of those. The speaker in the poem, possibly Spender himself, is evidently under the protection of his parents, who strive to "keep [him] away from children who were rough." If the other children are "rough," then the speaker is socially superior to them, but it is evident that he fears them—their every action toward him is imbued with violence, as shown in the use of the simile, "they threw verbs like stones." This is juxtaposed with the comment that they "wore torn clothes" as if the two things aggrieved the speaker equally, being equal threats to his "world."
The behavior of these children, in some ways, sounds natural to childhood: there is a certain idyll implied in the comment that they "climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams." This is a world outside of that of the speaker, a more sheltered child. In being separated from them, he fears them more, specifically their "hands and their knees tight on my arms" and their mockery of his "lisp." A child who is different fears the commentary of those who are not allowed to be his peers.
In the final stanza, however, there is an indication that the speaker, although he fears the other children, secretly longs to be one of them. The world of the speaker, "my world," is distinct from theirs and isolated; in the cases when they attacked him, he would "pretend . . . to smile," and he says that "I longed to forgive them, but they never smiled." The two types of children have been artificially separated by the concern of the parents, who fear how they might interact. The result, unfortunately, is that the ragged children seem to regard the speaker with as much distrust as he regards them. All of them are curious about one other, but their two worlds are never able to meet.