Jamain Hatton [Email: prof.hatton@gmail.

com]
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“My Parents’ and ‘Dreaming Black Boy’ are poems in which the speakers yearn to be
accepted.”
Write an essay in which you focus on this theme in these TWO poems. For EACH poem, you
must describe ONE instance in which the speaker’s yearning to be accepted is evident. You
must also discuss how EACH speaker responds to this feeling. Finally, for EACH poem, you
must examine ONE device used to portray the speaker’s yearning for acceptance. 35 marks

Stephen Spender and James Berry both took their readers on exciting journeys where they
encapsulated different yearnings for acceptance. This essay seeks to describe the individual
yearnings; the speakers’ feelings towards same and, of course, discuss excellent examples of
devices used by each poet.
In ‘My Parents’ the persona (a child) recalls his attempts to fit into a group he
admired but he was kept away from this group by his parents, ‘My parents kept me from
children…’ The parents may have wanted to ‘protect’ their child from boys who were outside
his social class, ‘…wore torn clothes… whose thighs showed through rags’ but their attempts
to keep him away may have failed. The boy yearned to be like his peers; he yearned to be
free, physically tough and fearless. He yearned to do the things they did, ‘ran in the street’,
‘climb cliffs’ and ‘stripped by the country streams’.
Though the boy’s yearning was implicit we can appreciate it through his admiration of those
boys. This admiration, ultimately his yearning, is seen in his smile even when those boys
were being mean towards him.
The little boy Stephen described was hurt by the actions of his peers but he somewhat
felt and appeared unbothered by it. He appeared ambivalent. His feelings wavered between
wanting to be like the boys and also fearing them. He seemed smaller to the other boys and
even had a lisp. Consequently he was afraid of the boys who were physically strong ‘muscles
like irons’; ‘knees tight up under my arm’. Perhaps in an attempt to stop their attacks he
‘pretend(ed) to smile’. We can feel how heartbroken he was when they didn’t accept him in
their circle and smiled back, ‘I longed to forgive them but they never smiled’.
Irony is witnessed in ‘My Parents’. It is ironic that the little boy who was mocked,
teased and badly treated wanted to forgive his ‘enemies’. ‘He smiled’ at them but they ‘never
smiled’ back. That unreciprocated smile tells a great lot. It shows us how the two groups
(different social classes) continued to be on separate spectrum, never mixing. Those parents
Jamain Hatton [Email: prof.hatton@gmail.com]
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just may have succeeded. Additionally, it is also ironic that this boy who is of a higher social
class admired the poor and uncultured children his parents wanted to keep him away from.
Most importantly, it is greatly ironic that the boys at the bottom of the social scale enjoyed
the freedom (climbing, bathing by the river etc.) that the speaker can only yearn for. Are they
really the poor ones?
When we examine Berry’s ‘Dreaming Black Boy’ we see a grossly different yearning.
We see a growing black child having to yearn for what is a basic tenet of human existence.
The reader can see from the start that the young boy was starved of attention from the people
he needed it from the most, his teachers. In class we painfully see that the teacher ignores him
and he badly wished it did not happen. ‘I wish my teacher’s eyes wouldn’t go past me today’.
This young boy seems greatly affected by this. We can see that it changes the way he feels, it
affected his self-confidence and he ‘held back when an answer came’. The boy yearned to be
included in the team’s celebration when he kicked the goal. What was ongoing in the school
was simply a continuation of what was going on when he was out of school. Every aspect of
his society ignored his existence and it hurt.
The speaker feels dejected and rejected because he remains ‘invisible’ in a society
defined by racism. His loss of self-esteem is directly connected to the ways he is treated by
society. Now he is only left to ‘wish’. The boy is naïve in his thoughts that society will
change and accept him. It is sad that his optimism will not change the way he is treated.
Despite this he hoped for a better day, determined not to be ‘a wood-cropper like my
ancestors’. We can feel sadness in our hearts when his dream is shattered, when he is
confronted with the ‘terrible burden’ of being black. Painful right?
In keeping with the boy’s dream to be accepted, all the stanzas began with, ‘I wish’.
The repetition reinforces and emphasizes the great longing to be accepted as a person. His
wish was to achieve his dream of a life free of oppression and discrimination. The wish
extended to life in the world where racial profiling was a norm. There is a certain innocence
in the repetitive ‘I wish’ which paints a sad picture of a crying child.
In these two poems though there are many differences we can see that both of them
were written and presented through the eyes of a child. This is what makes them both so sad
and mind-boggling.
In closing, the pictures painted through children in ‘My Parents’ and ‘Dreaming Black
Boy’ were clear accounts of yearning for acceptance. One child yearned to be accepted by a
Jamain Hatton [Email: prof.hatton@gmail.com]
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backward and racist society while the other longed to be accepted by free-spirited, rough
bullies. Oh my, what beautiful pictures they were.