Poem Commentary 'Child and Insect'

The poem “Child and Insect” written by Robert Druce, depicts an innocent child experiencing something that teaches him about the reality of life. The poem reveals vast shifts in young boy’s emotions from excitement, to horror, to irritation and finally to rage, when he finds a grasshopper and realizes the insect pretended to be dead. The child’s temperament is shown through the significance of the title, use of sensory imagery and use of form and structure.

The title, ‘child and insect’, is significant to the poem. By simply giving two words ‘child’ and ‘insect’, it makes the readers to look for the link between the two words which is a child learning about life through insect’s play. This also vaguely gives the readers an idea that it is a coming-age poetry about a child’s growing up. Its lack of descriptive nature aids to grasp readers’ curiosity to read as it neither informs about the age and gender of the child, nor the type of insect.

The use of sensory imagery takes a crucial role in depicting a child’s shift in emotions. When he finds a grasshopper, he is fascinated and excited about ‘the sudden clockwork fizz’ and its ‘shrieking meadow’. The use of metaphor here presents a rhythmic nature of poem and the sound image which attracts the child. The effect of sound on the child’s excitement is also presented. 소리로 인한 아이의 즐거움 설명. Even though the child does not know what he is doing to the insect, the grosshopper is fearful and hurtful. This shows the child’s innocence. This teaches him cause and effect. Petty trickery of the insect at the end shows its payback to what the child had done.

But, a sudden shift to ‘silence’ shows a change in atmosphere from excitement to horror which is presented as “sunlight and the landscape flood away in tears”. The change in style of narration from wild and joyful description of child clutching the insect to the delicate description of grasshopper acting, “nothing now: its dead struts snapped even the brittle lidless eyes crushed into the tangle” adds to his extreme shock and fear. When the grasshopper acts as if it is dead on his palm when revealed to the child’s mum, his ‘fearful’ clutching hand shifts to ‘[cradled]’ and it highlights his sad emotion. This reveals the opening up of child to the reality as he faces his first sadness and disappointment in his life. The more is exposed to negative emotion, the more he will break his shell of fantasy of the world and understand the true reality.

Another shift in emotion happens from horror to irritation when he finds out that grasshopper acted. The use of sensory imagery when the grasshopper ‘skirls unspoilt its chirruping music’ emphasizes the change of mood, to irritation. It is shown when the child ‘shakes [his mother] off’. His ‘weeping, sick with relief and rage’ represent his mixture of emotion and annoyance from ‘petty trickery’. This is because it is the child’s first time experiencing the betrayal and trickery, so it causes a great anger which is a completely new emotion for the child. At last he feels ‘so naked’ as his shell of innocence, joy and happiness is broken, exposed to the reality. As human learns from negative feelings such as rage, sadness and anger, the child may learn how to place importance on life regardless whether it is human’s lives or the insects’.