Summary for the poem television in 250 words
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Answer:
The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set —
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
Dahl advises from his experience that people should never ever allow their children to go near the television set. It is even better not to install ‘the idiotic thing’ called television. But why is a television an idiotic thing according to the poet? Throughout the entire poem, Dahl attempts to answer it.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
The poet shares his experience here. In almost every house he has visited, he has watched children gaping at the screen. They were staring with their eyes wide open and with absolute concentration of mind. For sitting a long time before the television set, they become tired. Sometimes they sit or lie in a lazy and casual manner (loll and slop and lounge about) and get sloppy. But still, they stare at the television until their eyes are too tired to watch any more (their eyes pop out).
All these are not Dahl’s imagination. He indeed saw a dozen eyeballs, i.e., half a dozen children sitting on the floor at someone’s house very recently, say last week.
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk
When the children are before a television set, they ‘sit and stare and stare and sit’ for long hours. They don’t seem to be moving from there, as they probably forget everything around them in the real world. Rather, the one they watch on the television becomes real for the time being.
They are almost hypnotized by this idiotic box. They are ‘absolutely drunk’, their minds are filled with those ‘shocking ghastly junk’ which are mostly unreal and inappropriate for the age. Those TV shows kill their valuable time and make them lazy with no room for their physical play and exercise. They have no scope of spending time with books and nature, and interacting with others. Their minds, filled with the images and stories of a virtual world, are compared to a drunk man’s imaginary world in an apt metaphor here.
The poet talks about the importance of books in the lives of the children and most importantly, how this passion for books has been substituted with the addiction for television.
The poet makes the television set like an evil which hinders the growth of brains for the children and hampers their creativity. Next, the poet highlights the vitality of books which are, however, ignored because of this television.
The author, at the end, requests the parents to do away with the television sets from their homes and instead place a nice book shelf at its place and fill it with good books.
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