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Where The Mind Is Without Fear Critical Appreciation
What is a critical appreciation of the poem "Where the Mind Is Without Fear" by Rabindranath Tagore?
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JANE AMES eNotes educator| CERTIFIED EDUCATOR
In "Where The Mind Is Without Fear" (also known as "Gitanjali 35"), Tagore imagines a place wherein people are allowed to thrive, free from the yoke of fear and stratification. The imagery oscillates between hopeful and bleak, as Tagore envisions the future while realistically facing the present. For instance, the speaker believes in the existence of the "clear stream of reason" but acknowledges that it currently veers into the "dreary desert sand of dead habit." Tagore's metaphors sketch the disparity between the present time and place and a future where people are truly free.
Other elements of the poem besides imagery also reflect this in-between feeling, this liminal mood of being aware of the present and trying to envision a better future. The first six lines of the poem end in semi-colons, punctuation which indicates both a stop and a continuation—a complex feeling of staying put yet moving forward.
The last two lines, on the other hand, resound with hope. There is a comma at the end of the seventh line, gracefully pushing the eye to the final line, where the speaker ends definitively with a period: "Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake." It is a hope, a prayer, and a call to action for the reader to "awaken" and allow our mind to be "led forward." We also know this line is the true essence of the speaker's meaning, the real point of the poem, because of how it begins. The last line begins with "Into," whereas every single other line begins with the word "Where." The last line is hereby made more distinct, and we can identify it as the meaning on which the poet wishes our thoughts to land.
(It's also important to know that Tagore was the architect of international education methods, and even at one time had his own experimental school. His belief in the unifying power of education certainly comes through in his description of a place "Where knowledge is free / Where the world has not been broken up into fragments / By narrow domestic walls.")