Explain how Morris creates sympathy both for the child and for the father in Little Boy Crying.

Mervyn Morris utilises several techniques to create sympathy both for the child and for the father in ‘Little Boy Crying’.  He uses imagery to convey the child’s viewpoint and to allow the reader to understand his anger and frustration, which is also supported by poetic devices that associate with the child’s emotions.  But the presence of irony reveals to the reader that although the child perceives his father to be a ‘villain’, in reality he is not.  ‘Little Boy Crying” is all about the struggles that a parent and their child face when love is compromised by punishment, and since people go through so much pain because of love, readers are forced to sympathise.

Imagery is widely used throughout ‘Little Boy Crying’ to induce sympathy for the child.  The father is described ad ‘the ogre that towers above” the little boy, emphasising not only that the father is physically larger than the boy, but also that the boy is vulnerable, weak and needs protection.  The use of the word “ogre” depicts the father as a menace to his son, and thus creates sympathy for the child because it shows that the father has an unfair advantage over his son, and is using it to hurt him.  The child imagines “chopping clean the trees he’s scrambling down,” which although shows the cruel side of the child, also indicates the amount of anger and hurt that he is feeling, and how his grief had driven him to cruelty.  The reader knows that he cannot do such a thing because he is much smaller and weaker than “the ogre”, so they feel a sense of pity for the little boy who is too vulnerable to fight back.

Furthermore, poetic devices help convey the child’s frustration which leads the reader to sympathise.  The father is compared to a “grim giant”, which establishes the fact that to him, the child is an ‘ant’ that he can squash.  Immediately the reader begins to hope for the child’s victory because it is human nature to help the weak.  The child also views his father as a “colossal cruel”, this time using alliteration to express his anger.  The sounds in that phrase are very harsh and clipped, devoid of all emotions except hatred.  It conveys how the child feels towards his father, as through the relationship is absent and he wishes he had no father.  As he imagines “plotting deeper pits to trap him in”, very powerful and strong syllables are heard in this use of alliteration.  It is a replica of the little boy’s anger, and shows that he is experiencing extreme levels of hatred towards his father.  By allowing the reader to understand the child’s anger, Morris creates a sense of sympathy for him.

However, irony is utilised in order to show the view point of the father to the reader in such a way that he is also sympathised.  Although the child believes that the father is “empty of feeling”, he does not know that in reality he “longs to lift him, curb his sadness.”  The disparity between the child’s perception and the reality is used as irony to show that the father is neither an “ogre” or a “grim giant”, but a gentle, sensitive man.  This causes the reader to pity him because not only has he been tragically misjudged, they also find out that he is in pain too, not just the child.  The child is surprisingly accurate when he imagines his father as the ‘victim of the tale’s conclusion”, however this is time because the father is also ‘scalded’ by the child’s sadness and feels ‘hurt’ as well.  Because of this the reader understands exactly how the father feels and realises that the child is not the only victim.

Two view points are presented in ‘Little Boy Crying’.  Imagery and poetic devices help express understanding of the child’s anger and pain, and the reader is obliged to pity him for his weakness.  It is only later on that the father’s view point is revealed through the use of irony, so that the reader ends up feeling sympathy for both the child and the father.

Mervyn Morris, in his poem ‘Little Boy Crying’ creates sympathy for both the child being ‘physically abused’ and the father, who disciplines in his son, especially with the use of emotive language to spur the reader’s heart.  In the beginning, when the event is seen from only one perspective, it is natural to side with the boy.  However, as the poem progresses the whole story is revealed, casting a light of fairness and dilemma for the father.

Immediately in the first line, Morris creates sympathy for the little boy whose mouth is “contorting in brief spite and hurt”.  He uses the contrast of before and after the “slap”, which turns the “recently relaxed [frame] now tight with guilt or sorrow” and “laughter … into howls”.  This contrast pictures the impact the slap had on the boy – his innocence and playfulness that turn into “frustration”, “sorrow” and “guilt”.  The sibilance in “quick slap struck” further reinforces the pain it brought to the boy.  The hit is short, hard, cold and impersonal.  When only this is mentioned and not the reason for the punishment, it is no surprise readers will sympathise with the boy with his “bright eyes swimming tears, splashing [his bare feet].

The poet continues to create more sympathy for the boy in the second stanza, not only focusing on the facts and hard data about the event but the little boy’s interpretation of it.  The boy starts to hate this abusive figure and imagines “chopping clean the tree he is scrambling down or plotting deeper pits to trap him in”.  This image portrays that the boy is of threat to his father too, wanting to kill him from bitterness without understanding the reason behind the slapping.  Emotive languages is still used, calling to the readers to sympathise more with the vulnerable and helpless little boy as “the ogre towers above [him], … empty of feeling”.  There is a meaning behind the surface, however, as the tide begins to turn.  Morris starts implying that what he has written about previously was just from the boy’s point of view.  The reference to the boy as “you” seems to be an accusation to him.  He starts to foretell what the actual scenario is like – the boy should not be sympathised.  He is “plotting” against his father for something he “cannot understand”.  The image of the boy “chopping clean the tree [his father’s] scrambling down “can be seen as a parallel to the fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”.  In that fairy tale, the giant and in this poem’s case, the father is the gentle caring character while Jack, or the little boy, is one of murderous desires.  The turning point sympathising with the boy to sympathise with the father begins here.

As Morris discloses the truth, he creates the father as a figure the readers sympathise for.  It is apparent that the father only hit the boy out of love and disciple, not hatred or anger.  Morris reveals to the readers what the ‘abused’ victim did not know and did not see “behind that mask”.  This fierce man longs to lift [him], curb [his] sadness with piggy-back or bull-fight, anything”.  The boy only saw the consequence, but not the “lesson [he] should learn”, the lesson his father “dare not ruin”.  This stanza portrays the father as vulnerable – in a larger extent than his son – and emotional figure.  The boy’s “easy tears” hurt [and] scald him”.  He had a dilemma of whether he should protect his son or discipline him and he chose the later, at the same time reinforcing that the boy “cannot understand, not yet”.  This point alone can and will arouse sympathy from the readers to the father, especially those who are parents, because they will understand the difficult decision and fine line between discipline and abuse.  By the end of the poem, the father, ironically is seen more as the victim than the boy.  The boy’s action reaped his punishment, but the father’s love resulted in hurt and misunderstanding.  Morris ends his work towards the father’s side, instructing to the boy that he “must not make a play thing of the rain”.  The father gets the final say with two meanings – one that he must not literally play in the rain, and two, that he should not (although he could not control it) use tears to hurt his father.  This ending note definitely reinforces once more that the father’s action came from love but the son’s from spite.

Morris cleverly reveals the scenario of discipline little by little in “Little Boy Crying”, beginning with emotional facts of what happened and the boy’s thoughts to create sympathy from readers to the boy and switching unassumingly to the way the adult perceived it on the whole, creating sympathy for the father also in the process.  This suggests to the readers that when one is young they can only see things from one point of view, but as they mature, the will face choices that involve unfortunate consequences either way as the father did.  Therefore, although Morris creates sympathy for the boy initially, more sympathy was created for the father, who was faced with a huge dilemma as a parent.