summary of night voices
Answers
Night Voices is one creepy poem.
The first two stanzas seem to be a conversation between a young child and his (the gender isn't clear, but let's assume it is a young boy for the sake of expediency) father near bedtime. The child asks his father, "who is it who whispers in the wood?"
The father, as any parent does, is quick to assure his child. He says, "it is the breeze/As it sighs among the trees."
But the child is unsure. He is convinced that "there's some one who whispers in the wood."
The second stanza is the same as the first, replacing whispering in the wood with murmuring in the night.
The third stanza is where things start to change. We (the readers) start to become aware that something is not right. The child asks the father to "let us go,/For the light is burning low." Let us go from where? Why would a child be pleading with his father to let him go? And who is "us"?
In the fourth and final stanza, our whole perception of this poem is drastically changed. For your convenience, here is the whole fourth stanza:
"Father, father, tell me what you're waiting for,
Tell me why your eyes are on the door.
It is dark and it is late,
But you sit so still and straight,
Ever staring, ever smiling, at the door."
Now, the father's actions have replaced the noises in the night as the creepy subject of the poem. The father is not a comforting figure, but stares, "ever smiling, at the door." He is terrifying--the active figure in the horror story. His answers from earlier in the story are under question, and we fear for the future of the children.
Answer:
"Night Voices" is a poem written by Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle.
Summary:
The poem starts with a child afraid of unknown voices coming from the nearby forest at night. The first stanza of the poem talked about the fear of the child and his dissatisfaction with the reply given by his father that the voices were nothing but the noise created by the wind. The child was hearing some kind of whisper in the woods.
In the second stanza, the child again asked his father about the night voices but this time he heard a murmuring sound. His father replied that they were just the sounds of wind striking the seashore. But the child believed that someone was there.
In the third stanza, the child heard someone smiling as they were being laughed at by someone. He was afraid and wanted to leave the place as the light was also burning low. Things become more suspicious and scary.
In the last stanza of the poem, a creepy and scary image of the father is portrayed. The father was waiting for somebody in the dark despite knowing the fear of his child. The child was confused as to why his father was sitting still. His father was sitting still and was staring at the door with a scary smile on his face.
The poem had a very mysterious ending.
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