Themes Explored Are Growing up (Transition from Innocence to Experience)

‘Revelation’ -

Understanding

An autobiographical poem where a small girl is sent to the farm on an errand – “for eggs and milk”.She is taken to see the bull – “Bob” – which is in the byre. The experience shocks and frightens her – the bull is a “monster” – “immense” – a dark creature which overpowers her with its stench, “hot reek”, size, “ big bulk” – “great wedge of his tossed head”, and angry noises, “ a roar to be really scared of”. She is afraid – “peers” into the byre. Reluctant to go any nearer she hovers on “the threshold” of the building. The bull is described as barely restrained by a chain, angry and restless – “ a trampling, and a clanking tense with the chain’s jerk” Its eyes roll in its head “swivelled” and “nostrils gaped”. Contrasted with the bull are the hens, pecking in the yard, completely undisturbed and unaware of the huge bull in the byre - “ oblivious hens”. To them the chain’s “clanking” is a “faint and rather festive tinkling” – altogether a much less threatening sound. The child is so affected by her encounter with the bull that she runs away in panic “ my pigtails thumping on my back in fear,” – passing the “big boys” engrossed in their cruel but typical pastimes of pulling “the wings from butterflies” and inflating “frogs with straws”. She runs past the ruins of birds’ nests, already plundered by the boys, clutching the eggs and milk for which she had been sent protectively.

Themes explored are growing up (transition from innocence to experience) .

Analysis

Verse One – the young girl ‘s reactions to the bull are revealed

· The title ‘Revelation’ refers to something being revealed, a sudden and illuminating disclosure, a truth believed to be revealed by God. This suggests a turning point/an epiphany of sorts in which something is changed/realised. (NB The poet is reflecting on this experience with the knowledge of a much older woman. The child in the poem feels fear and runs away, knowing only that, for some reason, the bull has terrified her. She is unlikely to have been able, at that age, to describe her experience in terms of male power/domination, and female vulnerability.)

· ‘I remember…’ the poet is recollecting a childhood memory and reflecting on it as a grown woman. The event obviously had an effect on her.

· the bull symbolises evil/danger/male power/destructive and fearful in its nature

· the opposite of the female, “well-rounded, self-contained” represented by the eggs and milk.

· ‘they called him Bob…’ idea of threat hiding behind benign exterior

· Word choice in ‘threshold’ connotations of marriage/ also girl is at threshold of adulthood

· Word choice ‘only black’ connotations of evil

· Lines 8-14 - literally eyes taking time to adjust to darkness but also gradual realization of bull builds tension and fear

· Synaestheia in ‘hot reek’ intensifies feeling of intimidation and claustrophobia appealing to dual senses of touch and smell.

· Caesura (punctuation indicating break in line of poetry) in line9 indicates gasp as child realizes size

· ‘big bulk’ alliteration lends emphasis to size, throwing stress on ‘bulk’

· Synecdoche ‘big bulk and roar’ reduces bull to most intimidating and threatening aspects e.g size and sound.

· ‘roar’ alludes to lions? Very primal.

· ‘trampling and clanking’ use of present participles indicate movement/restlessness

· Unlike the “self-contained” female nature; maleness, embodied in the bull, is incapable of self-restraint – is, in fact, restrained by others – chained and struggling to escape/ break out and wreak havoc – “anarchy”.

· ‘swivelled’ word choice suggest madness/lack of control

· ‘roared his rage’ alliteration intensifies sound with guttural, growling sound

· ‘nostrils gaped…’ simile illustrates size (perhaps flaring with anger) but also indicates sinister and threatening, almost violent aspect of bull in ‘wounds’

Verse two – note that this verse doesn’t drive on the narrative, it acts as a parenthisis between the first and third verses and is more reflective in tone.

· ‘the yard outside…’ contrast in place, reintroduces male/female contrast in transition from dark, sinister, claustrophobic byre to the peace and open air with ‘oblivious’ hens (again can be seen to represent the state of innocence that the young girl is leaving behind, unaware of danger that is so close)

· The contrast is continued in ‘festive tinkling’ (clanking) and ‘mellow stone’ (rage etc) ‘picked’ (trampling)

· Continues contrast between good/evil ‘placidity’ ‘anarchy’

· He is a “monster”, a “Black Mass”, describing not only the bull’s immensity, but introducing associations with the devil and evil – the opposite of good – an “Anti-Christ” – traditionally Satan whose sole purpose is to cause chaos.

· Here the title of the poem is shown to mean a sudden realisation on the part of the little girl that evil, something of which she had only been dimly aware, is very real and to her seems threatening and destructive:

“threatening the eggs, ………..and the placidity of milk.”

· Placement at start of line throws emphasis on threatening nature of bull

Verse Three

· This idea continues in the final stanza as the girl runs home glimpsing “big boys” who are literally being destroyers of nature – “pulled the wings from butterflies”, “blew up frogs with straws” and sees the evidence that they have already destroyed nests and stolen eggs.

· Her ‘pigtails thumping’ pathetic fallacy (a form of personification in which an inanimate object is given an emotion that mirrors that of the speaker) also reflects the beating of her heart as she runs

· ‘thorned hedge’ violent imagery, the world now appears threatening to her

· The child’s vulnerability and fear are emphasised by “my small and shaking hand” – (alliteration of ‘s’ sound mirrors trembling )yet she is still mindful of the need to protect what she has been sent for – the eggs and milk which symbolise the female with their connotations of fertility and nurture.