World Literature
World Literature
Rabindranath Tagore
Introduction
A child makes paper boats daily and floats them down a running stream. She writes her
name in big black letters on the boats and also writes the name of her village. She
hopes that someone in some strange land will find the boats and will know who has sent
the boat.
At times, she loads the boats with Shiuli flowers (Parijatha flowers); these flowers bloom
in the early morning when the sun is rising. She hopes that these blooms will be carried
safely, down the stream, to some land in the night.
To the girl, the little clouds floating in the sky appear like the white sails of a boat,
bulging in the wind. She wonders who might be her friend in the sky who sends these
clouds to race with her boats. The girl imagines the clouds floating in the sky and her
boats floating in the stream to be running a race.
Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in “Paper Boats”
.1. Assonance: It is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the
sound of /a/ and /o/ in “Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the
running/stream”, and /e/ in “In big black letters I write my name on them and the
name of / the village where I live.”
The poem starts with the poet showing a child narrating his story of
floating paper boats in the nearby streams. He states that he writes
his name and the name of his village on the paper boat in black ink
and hopes that the boat will reach that strange land where the stream
goes. This would make him popular in those lands. He would, then,
load his boats with flowers that grow in his garden and that the boats
will reach home safely. However, it seems that the clouds in the sky
are bulging to disrupt the journey of the boats as well as in his desires
to float them. He thinks that these are perhaps some other playmates
who send these clouds in the sky to race with his boats but he dreams
about his boats traveling at night under the glow of the stars with
fairies sleeping and lads dream
Childhood innocence, childhood longings,
and dreams of fantasies are three major
themes of the poem. The poet starts with a
boy narrating his story of floating paper
boats with his name and the name of his
village written on them to become famous.
He states that he would load his boats with
Major Themes the flowers from his garden and that they
would sail under the cloudy sky though at
some other place some other boys send
those clouds to race with his boats.
However, he desires that his boats float
forever full of fairies and full of lads having
baskets full of dreams. These childhood
fantasies make up the major theme of the
poem.
Thanking you for your
kind attention…