A PHOTOGRAPH

By Shirley Toulson
INTRODUCTION:
The poem ‘A photograph’ is a poem of remembrance with a rather sad tone. It brings
into focus the unstoppable changes ‘time’ forces on the lives of humans and objects. The
poem describes three stages .In the first stage, the photograph shows the poet’s mother
standing at the beach enjoying a holiday with her two cousins .She was twelve or so .The
second stage takes us twenty or thirty years later .The mother would laugh at the way she
and her cousins Betty and Dolly were dressed up for the occasion .In the third stage the
poet remembers her with a heavy heart. The photograph revives nostalgic feelings in the
poet.
SUMMARY
The poet sees an old photograph .It shows the poet’s mother and her two cousins Betty
and Dolly .They were on a holiday at the beach .The photograph shows the poet’s mother
a girl of twelve or so. Her mother was the biggest girl .The three stood silently smiling
through their hair, when the uncle captured the sweet smile of the mother in the camera
.That was the time when the poet was not born. At that time her mother’s face was sweet
and attractive .She was standing at the beach .The sea has not changed much. (But the
face of the mother seems to have changed a lot with the passage of time.)The three
cousins stood at the beach while the sea washed their mortal feet.
Twenty or thirty years later, the poet reminisces how her mother laughed when she
looked at the old photograph .She pointed out to her cousins Betty and Dolly how they
were dressed up by their parents for the sea holiday. That sea holiday had become a thing
of the past for the mother .But the sweet laughter of the mother which the photograph had
captured had become his own past .Both felt a sense of loss .The mother lost her happy
moments of her childhood which she enjoyed at the beach .The poet’s loss was the loss of
her sweet smile .Both laboured to bear the loss with ease.
The poet says that her mother has been dead for years .She has been dead nearly as many
years as she had lived(thirty years ago).He has nothing to say about the circumstances of
her death or about the situation captured in the photo .Silence only brings out deeper
silence and makes things mysterious.
SHORT ANSWERS (Important questions)
1. What does the cardboard show ?
Ans: The cardboard shows an old photograph. It shows the poet’s mother standing with
her two cousins Dolly and Betty .All of them were standing at the beach. They stood
smiling at the uncle who was standing at a distance with a camera.
2. ‘The sea ,which appears to have changed less, washed their terribly transient feet’.
How does the poet contrast the girls ‘terribly transient feet’ with the sea?
Ans: All the girls standing at the beach have terribly transient existence .They are mortal
and suffer physical changes with the passage of time .The mother’s sweet face and her
smile has disappeared after twenty or thirty years .But the vast sea remains unchanged or
seems to have changed less in their comparison.
3.Explain “The sea holiday was her past ,mine is her laughter”
Ans: Time spares none .Gone are the childhood days of the poet’s mother when she stood
at the beach enjoying a sea holiday .The photograph flashes back to the scene that was
captured about thirty years ago. The carefree laughter of the sweet girl who was just
twelve or so at that time has gone .For the poet the laughter of the mother has become a
thing of the past.
4.‘Both wry with the laboured ease of loss’ What is the loss ?Describe the ironical
situation.
Ans: Both of them suffer a sense of loss. The mother loses her carefree childhood .She
can’t have those moments of enjoyment again that she experienced at the beach. She
can’t be a sweet smiling girl of twelve again. The poet will never see her smiling face and
experience her laughter again in life. The irony of the situation is that both of them
struggle to bear the loss with tolerable ease.
Poetic Devices
1. Alliteration –stood still to smile
2. Transferred Epithet –washed their terribly transient feet
3. oxymoron-laboured ease
4. Personification-Its silence silences.
5. Allusion-Cardboard (photograph) itself. The durability of the cardboard shows the lack
of permanence of human life.
6. Sibilance- Silence silences 7. Synecdoche – feet (human being)