Question

Answer for another 98 points
In the poem "Night Voices" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, what do you imagine Father was staring at the door and smiling for?

Answer 1

I feel that the father is dead because these words such as ever staring and ever smiling gives us a hint that he is dead.There is also a chance where the child might be mad and is talking to a portrait of a person or his father...

Answer 2

The poem "Night Voices" is a simple four-stanza poem that can be interpreted many ways. Although it starts innocently enough, with the children asking their father about sounds that seem to be voices in the night, the final two stanzas become progressively eerie as the children become more frightened and the father sits "so still and straight, / Ever staring, ever smiling, at the door." Certainly the poem is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," which also begins with strange noises in the night and ends with a man sitting immobilized. Perhaps, as in Poe's poem, this father has lapsed into mental illness; the sounds are harmless sounds, but the man may have begun to believe that they are supernatural voices. Another interpretation is that Father has nefarious intentions and that he has formed a league with the "night voices" that are suspiciously chuckling in the glen. The voices could belong to human beings--either crazies or criminals--who the father intends to allow in the house at the right time. Thus he is "waiting" an appointed time or signal and smiles in anticipation of what he will do with the friends who are soon to arrive. This interpretation is more disturbing than the first because it suggests harm may come to the children.