8th English lesson the cry of children summary from study material
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“The Cry of the Children” Summary
Do you hear the children crying, brothers of mine, before they are even old enough to know sorrow? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers for comfort, but even that cannot make them feel better. Out in nature, the young lambs are baaing in the meadows, the young birds are chirping in their nests, the young fawns are playing in the woods, and the young flowers are being blown about by the wind. But here, these children, who are so young, my brothers—they are bitterly crying! While other children play, these child laborers are crying—right here, in our so-called free country.
Have you thought to ask these poor young children why they are crying so much? Old men mourn their pasts, though their futures were lost long ago—just as old trees in the forest shed their leaves; just as the year ends with the winter frost; just as an old wound, if re-opened, hurts the most; and just as old hopes are hardest to let go of. But the young, young children, brothers of mine, do you ask them why they stand there crying out in pain, while they are still young enough to press themselves against their mothers' breasts—here, in our supposedly happy homeland?
The children look up with their pale and worn-out faces, and it's so sad to see how terrible they look—for their childish faces display the kind of worn-out suffering seen in grown men. They say, "Your old earth is a gloomy place, and even though we're young, our feet are so tired. We haven't been alive for long yet we're already exhausted—and we have so far to go before we can rest in our graves. Instead of asking us what's wrong, you should ask the old people why they cry. Because the world is cold and unwelcoming to us, and we young ones have been totally abandoned, left to wonder why the graves are only for the old."
"It's true," the children admit, "that we might die young. Little Alice died last year, and her grave is like a snowball in the ice. We looked into the pit they dug for her, and saw there was no room for any work down there in that narrow grave! No one can wake her up from her sleep, even if we cry, 'Get up, little Alice! It's daytime!' If you listen by that grave, rain or shine, with your ear down to the earth, you'll never hear little crying anymore. If we could see her now, we wouldn't even recognize her—because now her smile has time to reach her eyes, and her existence is a happy one, soothed and slowed by her burial shroud and the tolling of the church bells. It's a good thing," the children say, "when we die young."
Oh, those poor children! They welcome death as preferable to life; they harden their hearts with the wax cloth used to wrap a corpse. Run away, children, from the mine and the city! Sing, children, as the baby birds do. Pick handfuls of pretty flowers in the meadow and laugh aloud as you run your fingers through them! I urge them so, but they only answer, "Are your flowers like our weeds near the mine? Leave us alone in the dark of the coalmines, do not taunt us with your fine pleasures!"
"Because," the children say, "we're so tired, we can't run or jump. If we cared about meadows at all, it would only be to fall down in them and sleep. Our knees shake with pain from being bent over all day, and we fall over onto our faces just trying to move. Through our droopy eyelids, even the brightest flower would look pale and dreary. That's because, all day long, we exhaust ourselves dragging our burdens through the dark of the underground coal mines; or, all day long, we push the iron factory wheels around and around.
"All day long, the wheels drone and spin. We feel the force of them in our faces, until our own hearts and heads spin and throb too, and the walls themselves seem to spin as well. The blank sky in the distant window seems to spin, the light on the wall seems to spin, the black flies that crawl on the ceiling seem to spin. Everything spins, all day long, ourselves included. And all day, the wheels drone on and on; sometimes, we wish we could beg, moaning like madmen, "Oh, wheels! Stop! Be quiet, just for one day!"
Yes, be silent! Let the children actually hear each other's breath, just for a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other's hands and be reconnected with the innocence of their youth! Let them understand that cold industrialism is not the only life God creates or makes possible. Let them test their souls against the false notion that they live forever in your clutches, oh wheels of industry! Still, all day long, the iron wheels keep turning, grinding life down from what it ought to be, and the children's souls, which God calls toward the light, keep spinning in the dark.