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Childhood Summary & Study Guide Description
Childhood Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:
This detailed literature summary also contains Further Reading on Childhood by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Childhood Poem Summary
Preview of Childhood Summary:
Stanza 1
"Childhood" begins with the speaker addressing a child who is in school, describing the child's feelings of boredom, loneliness, and alienation from other children. Adopting the language of a typical school boy's view of the world, the speaker says, "Time in school drags along with so much worry / and waiting, things so dumb and stupid." The speaker contrasts this negative representation of school with the joy the child feels after school. When school lets out, the boy is free, the world now expansive and inviting. These feelings are illustrated in the images of leaping fountains and mysterious "woody places." However, even in his newfound freedom, the boy still feels odd, different from others. This difference is illustrated in the image of him walking oddly.
Stanza 2
In this stanza, the speaker foregrounds his point of view as someone looking back on childhood. He compares the "terror" of childhood with the...
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This section contains 409 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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