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Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy

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Overview of the Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy by Lewis Carroll.

Lewis Carroll's poem "Speak Roughly To Your Little Boy" is a poem that speaks to the hearts of fathers and their children. The poem is about a father's love for his son and how he wants to protect him from the world. It speaks to the idea of how fathers want to shield their children from the pain that they themselves have felt. The poem is a little bit hard to understand and it can be quite difficult to get the meaning of the poem. We will read a little boy song in this article. 


The Gist of the Poem

However, there are some points that we can take from this poem. One of them is that this poem was written for children. The other one is that the speaker in this poem may have been a father and he was trying to teach his son something.


There are many different interpretations of this poem and some say it may be about an abusive father, but this is not what Lewis Carroll intended. If you read between the lines, it is clear that he is talking about a loving father who wants nothing but for his son to be happy.


This poem is a poem written by Lewis Carroll in 1855. This poem describes the conversation between a father and his son, who is still a baby. The father talks to his son in a very rough way, but he also loves him so much. He always wants to be with him and never leaves him alone. The father's roughness may be because he loves his son more than anything else and doesn't want to hurt him. He uses the word "roughly" to describe how he speaks to his son, which means that he speaks in an honest way without any form of deception or dishonesty.


Speak Roughly to your Little Boy Poem

- By Lewis Carrol

And with that she

began nursing her child again, singing a sort of

lullaby to it as she did so, and gave it a    

violent shake at the end of every line: -- --

"Speak roughly to your little boy,

And beat him when he sneezes;

He only does it to annoy,

Because he knows it teases."(in which the cook and the baby joined): -- -- "Wow! wow! wow!"While the Duchess sang the second verse of

the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up

and down, and the poor little thing howled so,

that Alice could hardly hear the words: -- --

"I speak severely to my boy,

I beat him when he sneezes;

For he can thoroughly enjoy

The pepper when he pleases!" CHORUS" Wow! wow! Wow!"


Speak Roughly to your Little Boy Poem


Speak Roughly to your Little Boy Poem


Significance of Father in the Poem

The role of the father in the poem shows us the immense love of a father towards his son. He might be harsh and cruel from the outside but very loving and standstill for his baby. The father wants his son to tackle any kind of situation so he could not find any kind of difficulty to overcome it. Here, a father who has earned experience from life wishes that his son should lead a life where he could have enough stamina to grapple with the hurdles that come in the pathway of life. It is the time when every father becomes more protective. Poem is just showing the expression of feelings of a father for his boy.


Theme

The poem, Speak Roughly To Your Little Boy, by Lewis Carroll has a theme of being careful what you say to children. It is a warning to adults not to say anything that might hurt the child's feelings. The poem is written in a conversational tone and speaks directly to the reader as if they were talking to their own son.


This poem was written in 1855 as advice for parents and teachers on how they should speak to children. It is not advisable to talk to children in a rough way as you are building the future and they are going to be what they see. The poem highlights the importance of being a mindful parent.


Summary

The poem is about a father's admonishment to his son. It is written in the form of a rhyming couplet, with each line having seven syllables. This poem was first published in 1855 and it has been widely anthologized since then. The author Lewis Carrol wrote this poem to his son, who was going through a difficult time. The father wants his son to be more obedient and listen to him more often. The poem showcases the difference in the parenting style of a mother and a father. We have discussed the theme of the poem in this article and have learnt the lyrics of the poem also. We hope you enjoyed reading this article, in case of any other doubts, feel free to ask in the comments.

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FAQs on Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy

1. Who wrote the poem “Speak Roughly To Your Little Boy” and in which year was it first published?

The poem “Speak Roughly to your little boy” was written by Lewis Caroll, a very popular  English author, poet and mathematician. It was published in 1855.

2. Explain the feelings of the mother as described in the poem.

The mother has a heavy heart as her child is ill-treated by his own father and the mother is not convinced with this kind of parenting which is full of admonishments and mistreatment for the kid. And hence she gets violent as she was forced to do something that she never wanted to do to her child.

3. Do you think the father doesn’t love his child?

No, the father does love his child but his way of expressing his love is completely different from the mother's. He speaks roughly to his child in order to prepare him for the outer world which is not going to be so kind to him always.


Father has a completely different parenting approach than the mother.