Poem Analysis: Boy with His Hair Cut Short

How do you see the world around you? As a beautiful paradise, or a grim failure? In “Boy with His Hair Cut Short”, we are given a glimpse into the life of a boy looking unsuccessfully for a job during the “Great Depression”. While the boy remains doubtful that he’ll find a job, his sister provides him with an optimistic viewpoint in hopes of giving him a glimmer of hope. In “Furniture Art”, we are introduced to a girl who is interviewing her neighbour, Mr. DuPont, for a project about different worldviews. Mr. DuPont shows her that the world truly is a beauteous place, we simply need to open our eyes to see it that way. Though the sister and Mr. DuPont both have a similar worldview, Mr. DuPont’s worldview is more realistic. In “Boy with His Hair Cut Short”, the boy comes home after yet another unsuccessful day of job-seeking. Even though he’s crestfallen, his sister offers to assist him by cutting his hair shorter.
While she cuts his hair, she continues to encourage him by telling him that “they can’t keep turning you down; the finest gentleman’s not so trim as you!” (18-19). But then we learn that this optimistic and hopeful demeanor is simply a facade, and that she feels just as hopeless as she does, when we read “meeting/ her earnest, hopeless look” (22-23). Upon reading this, we discover that she tries to look at a doubtful situation with a happy-go-lucky, unrealistic attitude. In “Furniture Art”, the narrator is working on a Socials project, in which she must interview a neighbour about their view of the world, and contrast it with her own. While interviewing him, she learns that English 10 Training Papers 2006/2007 Page 22 our supposedly good planet may not be so great, unless we look at it in a different way. Mr. DuPont goes on to explain that just because we have the money to buy stuff doesn’t mean that we’ll be happy, and that there is more to life than materialistic purchases.