18 pages • 36 minutes read
Wisława SzymborskaA Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Boundaries and Edges
The situation and the present tense verb in the title of “A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth” hints that the poem takes place under minor threat, in a place where things verge on happening. The little girl’s experiment focuses on the movement of things from one place to another, the transference of matter across borders. The tablecloth itself constitutes boundaries; its function as an object designates area. The child’s actions bring the object to “the brink” (Line 19), the table edge, the boundary between the realm of the table and the unknown for the child and for the objects. The child imagines the objects might explore other boundaries: “the ceiling” (Line 20) and “the windowsill” (Line 22), the gateway to the outside world. “Mr. Newton” (Line 23), however, cannot breach the boundary between “the heavens” (Line 24) and the child’s world, because the speaker preserves the child’s innocence of rules, beliefs, and philosophies. In that way, the speaker, the child, and by extension the reader, remain free to test any and all boundaries, through experiments both physical and imaginative.
Academic and Scientific Images
The speaker endows the child’s most likely unintentional behavior with purpose and meaning by framing it in scientific terms: “subject” and “investigation” in Line 4 and “experiment” in Line 25. Vocabulary like “examined” (Line 2) and “manifests” (Line 13) calls to mind the language of research and frames the child’s unwitting exploration of cause and effect as a purposeful, bold transgression. The bookshelf doesn’t “want to go” (Line 9), indicating that there is a world of knowledge the child attempts to move against, without success. When the speaker disavows Newton’s voice in Lines 23 and 24, it’s unclear if it’s the speaker or the child confronting the scientist in Line 24, daring him to witness and “wave his hands” (Line 24), as if equating the performance of gravity to a magic trick.
Domestic Objects and Setting
Countering the scientific and experimental language, the room where the events unfold is a consoling, domestic space. The room divides between large objects that don’t move in Lines 9 and 10 (bookshelf, cupboard, table) and the inhabitants of the tabletop, set in motion by the child’s tugging at the tablecloth. Between the cupboard and the items on the table, the speaker creates the space of a kitchen without declaring the location. This allusion to the stability, care, and order of kitchen activities represents creativity and improvisation, the kinds of testing and learning that can happen in a domestic environment. The objects on the table indicate a daily ritual, possibly breakfast, because “glasses, plates, /creamer, spoons, bowl” (Lines 14-15) represent a setting for a casual meal. The child might challenge the laws of physics, at least in the imagination of the speaker, but she does so from a place of stability and safety.
Related Titles
By Wisława Szymborska
