How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? Name : a. the figure of speech b. the literary device used in this context b. Who is the bird? What is the cage in which it sits? c. Explain the lines quoted above.
Answers
Answer:
"The School Boy" is a 1789 poem by William Blake and published as a part of his poetry collection entitled Songs of Experience. These poems were later added with Blake's Songs of Innocence to create the entire collection entitled "Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". This collection included poems such as "The Tyger", "The Little Boy Lost", "Infant Joy" and "The Shepherd". These poems are illustrated with colorful artwork created by Blake first in 1789.[2] The first printing in 1789 consisted of sixteen copies.[2]None of the copies of Songs of Innocence are exactly alike as some of them are incomplete or were colored in posthumously "in imitation of" other copies.[2]
"The School Boy" is a poem written in the pastoraltradition that focuses on the downsides of formal learning. It considers how going to school on a summer day "drives all joy away".[3] The boy in this poem is more interested in escaping his classroom than he is with anything his teacher is trying to teach. In lines 16–20, a child in school is compared to a bird in a cage.[3] Meaning something that was born to be free and in nature, is instead trapped inside and made to be obedient.
Answer:
The schoolboy poses a couple of rhetorical questions in the fourth stanza. The speaker begins the stanza by asking, "How can a bird born for joy sit in a cage and sing?" He compares himself to a caged bird here. A bird is meant to be free, to sing and fly as it pleases. When birds are caged, their natural desire to fly and be free is taken away from them.
Similarly, a child should be allowed to explore and create freely. Unfortunately, schools discourage children from being imaginative and creative. Schools, like bird cages, are places of confinement for children.
Punishment and fear are frequently associated with schools. As a result, the child's imagination and possibilities are limited, and he is forced to forget his youth.
Bird and cage are metaphors for child and school, respectively, in the stanza.
SPJ3