Among Schoolchildren Flashcards

1
Q

What are the overall messages of ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A
  • There is no need for WBY to look back on his schooldays and question if he should’ve done things differently as he is still that same schoolboy: just an older version- no separation!
  • Despite WBY’s looking back on a young MG, she’s is still that same young, beautiful person: just having aged
  • Death is a part of life- just the same as labour is part of the final creation, and the dancer is part of the dance- Thus WBY should embrace and accept it
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2
Q

What is the form of Among Schoolchildren?

A

Ottava Rima- 8 stanzas with 8 lines each in Iambic pentameter and rhyme scheme ABABABCC
-The same as in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ and typically used for heroic and epic poems: displays the epic journey through his life as he looks back upon it in the poem

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3
Q

How does WBY display his ageing and looking through life in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;”
–> metaphor for the passage through life

–>WBY becomes a schoolchild in that he is also educating himself over the events of his life

“There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow”
–>Ironic undertone as WBY recognises that this is the perception of him in his age, but he doesn’t want to accept this

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4
Q

How does WBY display the purposelessness of his life in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“In the best modern way”
–> feels his purpose has been exhausted and the modern way is better

“In momentary wonder stare upon / A sixty-year-old smiling public man.”

  • ->Lack of personal pronoun and simple description emphasises his opinions of his own futility
  • ->The dashes that break up “sixty-year-old” act like aposiopeses as WBY reluctantly accepts his ageing

”- enough of that” - Caesura of hyphen and “enough of that” emphasises how WBY tries to forget about his ageing and futility

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5
Q

How does WBY display the dream of eternality and going back to childhood in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“I dream” at start of second stanza juxtaposes “I walk” at the start of the first stanza
–>Emphasises how his introspection of his life is merely theoretical (link to “byzantium”- the place that no longer exists)

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6
Q

How does WBY allude to ‘Leda and the Swan’ in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“I dream of a Ledaen body”
–> emphasises how he not only wants his sexual pushes to come to fruition but also that he seeks the knowledge of the deity

Stanza V: “what youthful mother, a shape upon her lap” […] “the uncertainty of his setting forth”
–> Continues to question whether a mother knows what will come of their child (he does not know the future of Ireland)

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7
Q

How does WBY allude to ‘The Cat and The Moon’ in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“It seemed that our two natures blent” […] “Into the yolk and white of the one shell”

–>emphasises the constant link of different parts of nature

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8
Q

How does WBY display the link between the young and old MG in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“I look upon one child or t’other there / And wonder if she stood so at that age - “
–>WBY sees MG in the young

“every paddlers heritage - “ […] “colour upon cheek or hair”
–> displays the similarities in the “colour” and “heritage”

“And thereupon my heart is driven wild: / She stands before me as a living child”
–> the emotions WBY feels of the child is the same he feels for MG: hence, in the perspective of WBY, the young and old MG are the same and intrinsically linked

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9
Q

How does WBY begin to realise the blending of time and link between components of nature in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“She stands before me as a living child”
–>MG has now become a child, they are the same being; just in different form

“are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole”?
–>displays how all things are linked and the small components are part of a larger being

“How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
–>Rhetorical question to end the poem exemplifies how the outcome of life is indistinguishable to all the things that led to that outcome

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10
Q

How does WBY emphasise the swift and easy transition between the past, present, and future- displaying a link between all three- in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“Her present image floats into the mind- / Did Quattrocento finger fashion it?”
–>”floats” = soft and smooth transition through time

–>Emphasises the transient nature of time through juxtaposition of “present” and “Quattrocento” (Quattrocento refers to early renaissance art)

–> Dash at end of first line exemplifies the shift through time

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11
Q

How does WBY attempt to eternalise himself through artwork in ‘Among Schoolchildren’?

A

“Did Quattrocento finger fashion it”

–>In reference to MG and how she seems eternally beautiful, as if a piece of art

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12
Q

Quotations of the metaphor of the mother and her child in ‘Among Schoolchildren’ and its meaning? (3)

A

“What a youthful mother, a shape upon her lap”
–> “shape” repeated to emphasise the transitory nature of humans and their development through time

“And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape”
–> displays all the hardship the mother must go through to bring up the child through the sibilance

“Would think her son, did she but see that shape / With sixty or more winters on its head”
–>now that he is old and his years have been lived, what was the point in all the hardship of bringing WBY up?

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13
Q

Quotes for WBY’s reference to philosophers in ‘Among Schoolchildren’ and its significance?

A

“Plato thought nature but a spume that plays / Upon a ghostly paradigm of things”
–>Plato saw nature as merely a collection of things that abide by the laws of nature

“Soldier Aristotle played the taws / Upon the bottom of a king of kings”
–>Aristotle saw the importance of humans but thought that they had to be educated and disciplined

“Pythagoras/ Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings”
–> Made music that mirrored the spheres of planets

“Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird”
–>Link to Sailing to Byzantium and ironic in disregarding the world’s most famous philosophers displays how he will question the purpose and nature of life rather than reluctantly accept his death and ageing

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14
Q

How does WBY display the human act of creating symbols to represent emotion in ‘Among Schoolchildren’? (5)

A

“Both nuns and mothers worship images”
–>The images of their children and gods

“To keep a marble or bronze repose”
–>Link to Sailing to Byzantium in that people put their emotions into objects as they are permanent and tangible

“symbolise” at the end of line emphatically positions to display the importance of symbols to WBY- people use them to find emotion, and his poetry is renowned for them

“O self born mockers of man’s enterprise”
–>displays how the symbols do not come from the world and thus are not real, just as his poetry is meaningless as it is nothing more than symbols: HOWEVER, he prefers this as it lasts forever, and everything “self born” is meaningless to him and merely a “mocker” of man’s creation

–>”Labour is blossoming or dancing”
“Labour” links to “enterprise” and emphasises how just like the creations of “enterprise”, the “blossoming” of children or nature and the expression of the body, “dancing” is also a man-made creation. Similarly, “labour” links to childbirth- hence WBY displays the intrinsic link between man’s creation and nature, and his poetry and nature, and thus realises the link between all components- the young version of himself and the current, so theres no point in looking back negatively on his life

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