Explication Of Scenes From The Playroom by R.S. Gwynn
Explication Of "Scenes From The Playroom" by R.S. Gwynn
Dismembered dolls and burning felines are not scenes one would usually associate with a child's playroom, that is, not unless having read the poem "Scenes from the Playroom" by R.S. Gwynn. This poem tells the story of a day in the life of an affluent family, but is the reader getting the whole story, or as the title suggests, just a "scene?"
The poem opens with a scene one would expect to see in a playroom: "Lucy with her family of dolls" (Line 1). The author conveys nothing out of the ordinary with that image but then makes a drastic turn when he states that Lucy now "Disfigures Mother with an emery board" (Line 2). This is a rather gruesome image, but nothing in comparison to what the last two lines in this stanza offer: "While Charles, with match and rubbing alcohol, / Readies the struggling cat, for Chuck is bored" (Lines 3, 4). In this stanza the author has established that these two children, Lucy and Charles, or more lovingly, Chuck, lack the basic human appreciation for their property, and worse, for life. Out of sheer boredom Chuck is going to set the cat on fire and Lucy is sanding away at her doll; not the usual scenes from a playroom.
More mischief is portrayed in the following stanza as "The young ones pour more ink into the water / Through which the latest goldfish gamely swims" (Lines 5, 6). Here the reference to the "young ones" is most likely referring to the younger siblings of Lucy and Charles. Them pouring more ink into the water just reiterates the fact that their temperaments don't stray too far from those of their older siblings. The words "more" in line 5 and "the latest" in line 6 imply that this isn't the first time that a goldfish has died from dye in this playroom. The description of the goldfish's "gamely" swimming in line 6 gives the impression that it is being hunted as game would be. The last two lines in the second stanza go back to the picture of Lucy playing with her dolls: "Laughing, pointing at naked, neutered Father. / The toy chest is a Buchenwald of limbs" (Lines 7, 8). It is interesting to note the author's reference to Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp during World War II at which over eighty...