Childhood

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1989

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Walker’s “Childhood” is a contemporary sonnet, which means it has most of the features of a traditional sonnet but lacks the meter and rhyme scheme usually seen in a Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnet. “Childhood” is 14 lines long and divided into two stanzas, the first stanza being an octet (eight lines long) and the second stanza being a sestet (six lines long). This follows the form of a Petrarchan sonnet. However, Petrarchan sonnets usually follow an ABBA CDCCDC or ABBA CDECDE rhyme scheme and are written in iambic pentameter (a metrical rhythm where each line contains five iambs or metrical feet, which are sets of two syllables, unstressed then stressed). While Walker has followed the pentameter part with each line having exactly 10 syllables, the rhythm is not iambic but a mix of iambs and trochees (a stressed then unstressed foot), and the rhyme scheme is ABBA CBBC EFFE GG. This rhyme scheme only becomes clear with very careful inspection since there are both the expected perfect rhymes, such as “lamps” (Line 2) and “camps” (Line 3) or “haystacks” (Line 10) and “shacks” (Line 11), as well as the trickier consonant rhymes—words with the same ending consonants—of “roads” (Line 5) and “words” (Lines 8) and the sight rhymes—words that look the same but actually sound different—of “country” (Line 9) and “by” (Line 12). Beyond the strict form, Walker’s sonnet reflects a Miltonic sonnet since it deals with more serious social issues than the nebulous love and beauty usually tackled in a Shakespearean sonnet.

Walker may have chosen to use the sonnet form due to the naturally occurring shift in the form. Broken into two stanzas, there is a noticeable break between Lines 8 and 9. In this moment of pause, the poem turns from the miners to the landscape as a whole. Walker uses the sonnet form to redirect the poem in Line 9 to a larger commentary of the injustices of the American South (“low cotton country” [Line 9]) and the problems the community faced (“famine, terror, flood, and plague” [Line 12]).

Imagery

Imagery in “Childhood” sets the scene of the town, establishing a feeling, place, and tone. Defined as elements that invoke the five senses to create a mental image of an object or place or to establish a particular feeling, imagery in poetry is typically expressed in vivid figurative language (“Imagery.” The Poetry Foundation.). Examples of imagery in “Childhood” establish a tone rooted in place. For example, the speaker opens the poem with the image of the “red miners” (Line 1), which paints the picture of the men who work in and emerge from the Ishkooda mines each night. The imagery of the red dust and the miners is carried into the following lines as the speaker vividly describes their clothing (“dressed raggedly” [Line 2]) and what they’re wearing and carrying (“wearing carbide lamps” [Line 2]). The dust returns in Line 3 when the speaker describes the men as coming “down red hills to their camps” (Line 3). Finally, the final use of red appears to describe the camps themselves: “their camps / dyed with red dust from old Ishkooda mines” (Line 4). These opening four lines are steeped in imagery. They set the scene, establishing a specific place of the Ishkooda mines in Birmingham, Alabama and a feeling of the whole town being covered by the red dust of the mines.

Walker continues to use imagery throughout the rest of the poem. Lines 7 and 8 use sound to describe the men: “the swing of dinner buckets” (Line 7) establishes a tinny clink sound as the men walk, and “grumbling undermining all their words” (Line 8) adds to the scene of the men exiting the mines tired, hungry, and dissatisfied with their lives.

In Stanza 2, the poem shifts to the landscape. Walker’s imagery focuses on the land beyond the mines, the land of “low cotton country” (Line 9). The imagery of the moonlight again reinforces that the speaker is remembering the nighttime of her childhood home. Here, the imagery tries to show the area’s beauty (“where moonlight hovered over ripe haystacks” [Line 10]), but this soothing imagery is immediately contradicted with the permeating tone of negativity: “stumps of trees, and croppers’ rotting shacks” (Line 11). Imagery in “Childhood” sets the tone of the poem. From the red dust of the Ishkooda mines permeating the entire community to the rundown housing, Walker’s speaker paints the difficult place where they were raised.

Memory and Perspective

Perspective, or point of view, is defined as the point from which a story or poem is told. In “Childhood,” the story of the speaker’s childhood memory of the Ishkooda mines is told from the perspective of an adult speaker looking back on their childhood. Because of this retrospective point of view, Walker also uses memory as a literary device to tell the story of the speaker’s childhood and to also allow the speaker to comment on this story in the present as an adult.

Memories in poetry come from a variety of sources, including social, political, or religious events and one’s personal history. “Childhood” covers a number of these perspectives, as the Ishkooda mines have a meaningful history in post-Civil War America and the pre-civil rights movement era. The speaker’s experiences growing up in a mining town near Birmingham, Alabama during this period is both personal and evocative of historical meaning.

Even if the poem stays entirely in the past tense—as Walker’s poem does—the use of retrospective point of view and memory in poetry often allows the poem to occupy two periods at once. Since the speaker is remembering a moment in their past but is currently occupying the present, the poem lives in both the past and the present tense. In “Childhood” the adult speaker reminisces about their upbringing. However, what they notice and share about their childhood from the adult perspective as they look back on that time may be quite different from the way they viewed the situation as a child while growing up. Thanks to the use of memory, the speaker is able to look back on this time in their life with newfound wisdom and insight.

This insight allows the speaker to recognize adult truths about the miners, the mining town, and their own childhood—all of which shaped them into the adult they are now. For instance, the following insight in Lines 12-14 is an insight a child would not be able to recognize:

“with famine, terror, flood, and plague near by;

where sentiment and hatred still held sway

and only bitter land was washed away” (Lines 12-14)

Through the adult lens, the poem is able to both share a memory of the speaker’s childhood while also commenting on this memory as an adult. This results in a poem that is both about a moment in the past and about a deeper understanding in the present.