Tiny Feet by Gabriela Mistral is a poem that was published in her book Ternura in 1924.

The poem
highlighted the terrible and appalling situation of childhood and poverty in Chile.

Gabriela Mistral was born in Vicuña, Chile,

therefore she was inspired by the history of

her country and two historians named

Gabriel Salazar and Julio Pinto who touched on the topic of childhood in late Chile.

"Santiago, Chile was a pace which was extremely contaminated and children would play in
contaminated patios of small and poorly built shacks. There the children were infected and suffocated to
death."

TINY FEET poem by : GABRIELA MISTRAL

(ENGLISH TRANSLATED)

A child's tiny feet,

Blue, blue with cold,

How can they see and not protect you?

Oh, my God!

Tiny wounded feet,

Bruised all over by pebbles,

Abused by snow and soil!

Man, being blind, ignores

that where you step, you leave

A blossom of bright light,

that where you have placed

your bleeding little soles

a redolent tuberose grows.

Since, however, you walk

through the streets so straight,

you are courageous, without fault.

Child's tiny feet,

Two suffering little gems,

How can the people pass, unseeing.

Piececitos

( ORIGINAL LATIN VERSION )

Piececitos de niño,

azulosos de frío,

¡cómo os ven y no os cubren,

Dios mío!

¡Piececitos heridos

por los guijarros todos,

ultrajados de nieves

y lodos!

El hombre ciego ignora

que por donde pasáis,

una flor de luz viva

dejáis;

que allí donde ponéis

la plantita sangrante,

el nardo nace más

fragante.

Sed, puesto que marcháis

por los caminos rectos,

heroicos como sois

perfectos.

Piececitos de niño,

dos joyitas sufrientes,

¡cómo pasan sin veros

las gentes!

Poetic Devices :

Tiny Feet contains Rhyming, Imagery, Personification, Metaphors, and a Theme

RHYMING - when a word may end with a sound that is similar to another word.
"frio" and "nino" in the 1st stanza

"pasais" and dejais in the 3rd stanza

(original latin version)

Imagery - When a literary piece of word put a visual image in your head.

Line 1 and 2 in (English Version)

A child tiny feet,

Blue, blue with cold

Personification - typically not human, the characteristic that living things only have.

In line 5 and 6:

Tiny wounded feet,

Bruised all over by pebbles

Metaphor - When a phrase is given to an object or action when in literal terms it is not legitimately
relevant.

Line 8:

Man, being blind, ignore

and Line 11, 12, 13:

Where you have place,

your bleeding little soles

a redolent tuberose grows

Theme
The theme of the poem Tiny Feet by Gabriela Mistral is childhood. The childhood we get a sense of in
this poem is a lost childhood. A childhood that is ignored and we become emotionally blind to. Gabriela
Mistral explores her theme a lot with the relationship of a poor child and the blindness of a human that
passes by the hurting child.

Thematic Analysis :

The message that Gabriela Mistral tries to send over the audience through Tiny Feet is that instead of
treating children terribly with appalling manners, we should treat them with love, kindness and respect,
because children are innocent beings and “blossoms of bright lights”.

This poem is extremely heart breaking. The tone of this poem expresses misery. We are presented to
the lives of poor children. At the beginning of the poem, Gabriela introduces us to a child, or more
specifically, only a child’s barefooted feet to represent the incompleteness of the child. We get a sense
of how there was a terrible decision to leave a child out in the cold streets suffering. Gabriela represents
the insensitivity and cruelty of humans and how before thinking about the suffering of others, we look
away and ignore it. Then it is forgotten, as if it never existed. In the last two stanzas, we are given the
time to think about how courageous and brave these “little gems” are, though they live a tough life.

Gabriela Mistral's poem was extremely well-written and she send her message throughout poem very
clearly.