22 pages • 44 minutes read
V. S. NaipaulB. Wordsworth
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1959A 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
Poetry
Poetry is an important part of “B. Wordsworth.” For the poet and the boy he teaches, poetry is a symbol of their connection to the world. Wordsworth uses poetry to express his connection to the people and the things he observes. His desire to write the greatest poem in the world stems from his wish to give something back to the society he inhabits while–at the same time–describing the beauty he observes where others do not. The bees, stars, and plants might seem like mundane facts of life, but they are fertile ground for poetry. The poems that Wordsworth writes are symbols of his reverence for the world and his desire to share his wonder with others.
For all his care and appreciation, however, Wordsworth is not a success. He has never sold a poem, and he makes money by singing covers of other people’s songs. Furthermore, his attempt to write the greatest poem in the world ends in failure. He realizes that life and existence are too profound and too complex to be distilled into a single poem. In this respect, the poetry portrayed in the story is imbued with tragic symbolism. The duality of poetry is that it can symbolize both his delight at the world and his tragic failure to distill this delight into an actual poem.
The key aspect of poetry in the story is that a poem does not have to be a piece of literature. As Wordsworth explains to the boy, the overgrown garden in his home is a poem. The garden symbolizes his dead wife’s love of nature and, by allowing the garden to become wild, Wordsworth honors his wife’s memory. Likewise, the meals that the boy’s mother provides to the poor members of the community are a form of poetry. The garden and the meals are expressions of the same sincere connection to the world that Wordsworth hoped to distill into words. While he might believe that he is a failure, Wordsworth wins by showing the world that poetry can exist in symbolic form.
The House and the Garden
The house where Wordsworth lives is a symbol of his place in society. He is alone and separate from the community; he believes his role is to observe and document the world through literature. This role naturally separates him from society, and he distinguishes himself from other people through his beliefs, his actions, and his home. The neatly kept gardens of Miguel Street and the surrounding blocks are notable in their conformity. Everyone tries to control the natural world, taming the plants and wildlife in their gardens. The boy describes the bees in his yard as uninvited guests. To Wordsworth, however, they are a source of endless fascination. Likewise, his garden is overgrown and wild. It symbolizes how much he differs from the rest of the community.
To Wordsworth, however, the garden has a secret, personal symbolism which he shares only with the boy. He tells the boy a story about a young married couple which, he implies, is based on his own life. His wife died and her love for their garden has become her legacy. Wordsworth allows the garden to become wild and overgrown as a tribute to her memory. The garden is overgrown not because he is lazy but because he wishes to respect his wife’s love for the unbridled, uncontrollable beauty of nature. The revelation of the garden’s meaning is a reminder of the importance of perspective. For most people on Miguel Street, the overgrown garden is a symbol of laziness or detachment. For Wordsworth, it symbolizes love and loss.
At the end of the story, Wordsworth dies, his house is knocked down, and the overgrown garden is removed. No one seems to remember who lived there or how the garden once was. The boy, however, clings to his memory of Wordsworth. The existence of the short story is proof of his memory, as it narrates his experiences with the old poet. Even in their absence, the house and garden function as symbols of the story’s themes. They can be erased in a physical sense but Wordsworth’s impact on the world cannot. The boy will always remember the old poet. Wordsworth’s influence allows the boy to detect and share the profundity of the missing house, becoming a tribute to the dead man just as the garden was a tribute to the poet’s dead wife.
Fruit and Food
Fruit and food symbolize the way in which different perspectives can shape a view of the world. For example, Wordsworth invites the boy into his garden to feast on the ripe mangoes that grow there. For Wordsworth, the ripe mangoes are a symbol of the bounty and beauty of the natural world. At this point in the story, the boy views the mangoes as a sweet treat and a reward that is not available to him at home. When he returns to his house, however, he is introduced to a third perspective. His mother notices the fruit juice stains on his shirt and beats him. For her, the strains are a reminder of how much she must work as a single mother and how little her boy seems to pay attention to the work he creates for her. None of these perspectives on fruit are wrong. But the layered, complicated alternative interpretations of the fruit show the complexity of life.
At the same time, fruit is a demonstration of the vast interconnectedness of everything that Wordsworth tries to teach the boy. Just as distant stars can come together to form a constellation, the fruit and bees are part of a delicate and complicated ecosystem. The uninvited guests in the boy’s yard interact with the flowers in the overgrown garden at Wordsworth’s home and produce the juicy, ripe mangoes that mean many different things to different people. The existence of the fruit validates Wordsworth’s attempt to find the ways in which everything in the world is bound together.
