Nemerov's September, The First Day Of School

Now that the language of the poem has been looked at it is time for step two. What step two is in a New Critical analysis is: “examine all allusions found within the text by tracing their roots,” (Bressler 62). In Nemerov’s poem the first allusion is the door the child disappears behind. The door is a portal to the world of knowledge and understanding. The parent is not able to provide the child with the knowledge that the school can, which is why the child disappears behind the door. The second allusion used a Biblical one, this being Joseph’s dream. According to the website Bible Getaway, Joseph had a dream that he would be given power, and when he told his brothers of this dream he was hated. When applying this to Nemerov’s poem, when the

A poem’s tone is the overall mood of the poem. In “September, The First Day of School” the overall tone is hopeful. The speaker believes that goodness that will come from leaving their child behind at that educational door. The speaker even repeats twice in the poem: “…great kindles come of it in the end” (Nemerov 18 and 36). It is this line that ends both part one and part two of the poem. There is also a second tone throughout the poem and that is an instructive one. The poem is explaining what happens to a child once they enter school. The child will learn things: “from the alphabet come Shakespeare’s plays” (Nemerov 22). The child will begin to be able to take all of the “bits and pieces of a stuff” (Nemerov 10) and create concrete ideas and understandings with them. The speaker of the poem knows this, and that is why they are instructing parent’s to allow their children to walk through the door of education. The speaker in the poem, or the point of view of the poem, is that of a parent. Both of these elements connect to the overall theme of the poem, which is the sacrifice and loss a parent feels in giving up a child to school. The parent must give the child over to the teacher, because the parent knows it is for the greater good of the child. “Among this teacher have a care of him/ More than his father could” (Nemerov 32-33). The teachers

(Bressler 62). The overall tension throughout the poem is the internal conflict the parent feels leaving their child at school. The poem achieves this dominant effect by believing “a great kindness will come of it in the end” (Nemerov 18 and 36). Even though the speaker did not want to let their child disappear into the school, they let him because it was the right thing to do for the child. The child needs to be ground and molded into an educated person, even if it means the parent will have to give up some control over the child. The parent does not know how their child will come out after all of the schooling, but they know it’s for the best, because they themselves have already been through