Mr. Grumpledump's Song

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Mr. Grumpledump’s Song” is formatted as a singular, 20-line stanza, or group of lines. The poem is written in free verse, meaning that there are no consistent patterns of rhyme, rhythm, or meter throughout the entirety of the piece. Almost every one of the poem’s 20 lines are end-rhymed, meaning that they share a similar sound between the final words. However, Silverstein’s rhyme scheme is extremely erratic. The first four lines of the poem are structured in a traditional AABA rhyme scheme: “Everything’s wrong, / Days are too long, / Sunshine’s too hot, / Wind is too strong” (Lines 1-4). These four lines also share the same meter, each comprised of four beats, or syllables, per line. This pattern is never repeated again, and instead shifts to alternating end rhymes every four lines. Instead of AABA, the poem changes to CDCD at Line 5: “Clouds are too fluffy, / Grass is too green, / Ground is too dusty, / Sheets are too clean” (Lines 5-8). The meter also changes at Line 5, changing from 5 beats to 4 beats every other line from Line 5 through to the poem’s final line, Line 20. This back and forth within the meter and rhyme create a faster pace, overwhelming readers with Mr. Grumpledump’s never ending list of complaints. The ever-changing rhyme and meter also reinforce Silverstein’s appraisal that the poem is a song, engaging readers with an interesting cadence when read aloud.

Diction

Diction is the literary term that describes an author’s word choice, or the intentional selection of vocabulary that is most effective, appropriate, or clear for any given piece of writing. Silverstein’s use of plain and light-hearted language makes the poem’s more mature themes of despair and growing up (see: Themes) more accessible to his young audience. Every line of the poem is formatted in the same, easy to follow manner: every line contains a subject, verb, the adverb “too,” and a singular descriptor of each subject. For example, the subject “kids” are described as being “too noisy,” the subject “shoes” as “too tight” and so on (Lines 15-16). This method of repetition makes it clear to young audiences just how many things annoy the poem’s speaker, Mr. Grumpledump. Silverstein uses diction as a way to make young readers laugh, favoring words like “drippy” and “fluffy” that are common to childhood vernacular (Lines 11, 5). Silverstein’s imagined, nonsense surname for the character Mr. Grumpledump is an extremely fun name to read aloud because it is not likely to be heard often if ever by his readers, eliciting laughter at the absurdity of the name alone.

Circular Narrative

Poems that contain a circular narrative end in the same way that they began, and while this is true of “Mr. Grumpledump’s Song,” beginning and ending with the same assertion that “everything’s wrong,” Silverstein subverts the conventions of the circular narrative structure through the characterization of the poem’s speaker (Lines 1, 20). Typically, characters within a circular narrative undergo some sort of transformation, forming new conclusions about themselves. Mr. Grumpledump; however, remains unchanged after the poem’s 20 lines, still upset with the world and hopeless that his life will ever get better. Silverstein uses the conventions of the circular narrative structure to reinforce just how stuck in his ways and thought patterns Mr. Grumpledump is, showing readers how trivial it is to perseverate on things for too long like Mr. Grumpledump.