Boy at the Window

Boy at the Window: analysis

Introduction

This is a short poem in two eight-line stanzas about a child and a snowman looking at each other through a window. In the first stanza the boy weeps for the snowman, left alone outside as a stormy night begins. In the second the view turns around. The snowman is content in the cold, but he sheds a tear for the boy.

The poem is about sympathy and about point of view. Each figure pities the other from inside his own world. The final line leaves the reader with the boy's warm house, full of "such love, and so much fear".

Summary

The first stanza shows the boy indoors at dusk, looking out at the snowman standing alone. The sight is more than he can bear, and he weeps as he hears the wind preparing a night of "gnashings and enormous moan". Through his tears he can hardly see the snowman, whose pale face and "bitumen eyes" seem to return a "God-forsaken stare". The boy imagines it looks the way "outcast Adam" looked back at paradise.

The second stanza turns to the snowman's side. He is "nonetheless, content", with no wish to go inside, where the warmth would make him die. Still, he is moved by the child's crying, and though his element is frozen water, he melts a little. From "one soft eye" he drops "A trickle of the purest rain, a tear" for the child at the bright window. The boy there is surrounded by "Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear."

Themes and meaning

Point of view is the central theme. The boy reads his own feelings into the snowman and sees it as abandoned. The second stanza shows that the snowman does not share that view. For him, the cold is home, and going inside would mean death. The poem shows how one being's comfort can look like suffering to another.

Sympathy across difference is a second theme. Neither figure can enter the other's world, since the boy cannot go out and the snowman cannot come in. Yet each is moved by the other. The snowman's tear answers the boy's tears. The poem suggests that compassion can be real even when it rests on a misunderstanding.

The fear inside safety is a third theme. The last line lists "warmth", "light" and "love", then adds "so much fear". The snowman's pity can be read as wiser than the boy's, since a child who feels so deeply will meet much grief. The fear may be the boy's present terror of the storm, or a fear that will follow him as he grows. The line holds both readings.

Exile and the lost garden form a fourth thread. The simile in line 8 likens the snowman's stare to "outcast Adam" looking back at paradise. In the boy's eyes the snowman is shut out of Eden. The second stanza quietly reverses this. The snowman is content outside, and it is the boy whose Eden holds fear.

Tone

The first stanza is full of feeling. Words like "weeps", "gnashings", "enormous moan" and "God-forsaken" give the boy's grief a grand, almost biblical scale. The poem does not mock this. It takes the child's sorrow seriously while letting the reader sense its excess.

The second stanza cools and steadies. Its opening, "The man of snow is, nonetheless, content", is calm and a little wry. The tone becomes tender as the snowman "melts enough" to cry. The ending is gentle and sober. The careful list of "warmth", "light" and "love" turns, in the last phrase, toward an adult awareness of fear.

Form and structure

The poem has 16 lines in two stanzas of eight. The metre is iambic pentameter, and it is very regular. Nearly every line has ten syllables.

The rhyme scheme is ABBABCBD in the first stanza and EFFGFBFH in the second. Each stanza rests heavily on one sound, first that of "bear", "prepare", "where" and "stare", then the long i of "die", "cry", "eye" and "by". The word "tear" in line 14 is spelled like the first stanza's rhymes, which links the two halves. The two stanzas mirror each other, matching the two points of view.

Poetic devices

Personification line 9

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content The snowman is given feelings of his own. This lets the second stanza answer the boy's view with another one.

Allusion line 8

As outcast Adam gave to paradise The boy sees the snowman as Adam expelled from Eden. The comparison shows the size of the child's pity.

Imagery line 6

The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes Dark pitch eyes in a white face make the snowman look haunted. The image explains why the boy finds the stare so desolate.

Hyperbole line 4

A night of gnashings and enormous moan The wind is magnified into a scene of torment. The overstatement shows the storm as the frightened child hears it.

Paradox line 13

He melts enough to drop from one soft eye A snowman's melting is his death, yet here it becomes a sign of feeling. He spends a little of himself to weep.

Irony line 10

Having no wish to go inside and die The warm house the boy would offer means death to the snowman. Each creature's comfort is the other's danger.

Anaphora line 16

Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear. The repeated "such" builds a list of comforts. The change to "so much fear" turns the line at its end.

Alliteration line 1

Seeing the snowman standing The soft s sounds slow the opening line. They set a quiet, wintry mood before the grief arrives.

Metaphor line 14

A trickle of the purest rain The snowman's tear is called rain. It is fitting, since he is made of water, and it makes his pity seem pure.

Words worth knowing

bitumen

Pitch or tar. Here, the black lumps used for the snowman's eyes.

gnashings

Grindings of teeth, a sign of rage or anguish. It echoes the biblical phrase weeping and gnashing of teeth.

element

The natural surroundings a creature belongs in, as water is a fish's element.

pane

A sheet of window glass, not pain, though the sound hints at it.

What readers have said

• Elisa reads the boy as wanting the snowman inside, while the snowman feels no isolation at all. Elisa, 2006
• Janice Brough's Scottish class concluded the theme is perception and misinterpretation, since each thinks the other is in danger. Janice Brough, 2008
• Daniel, aged eight, takes it as showing how people misread one another's situations and pain. Daniel, 2006
• Alexander, from Belgium, reads a set of opposites, the civilised boy indoors against the snowman living in nature. alexander, 2006
• Antwonette points out that the snowman is content outside because the house would kill him. Antwonette, 2006
• Amal stresses that the two pity each other, and asks for whom the tears are really shed. Amal, 2011