“The School Children,” by Louise Glück is first and foremost a poem describing children’s endeavors as they go off to school. It’s a comparison that reveals the contrasting characteristics of mothers and teachers, but the struggle of the poem is distinguishing which character is superior. Are the teachers being glorified or disgraced? Are the mothers being valued or belittled? And what effect does each of these roles have on the children? Mothers offer love and personal lessons that cannot be replicated by the professional lessons provided by teachers. Glück uses these common perceptions and juxtaposes them to amplify their differences and prove to the reader that everyone needs both forces in his or her lives. In this poem, it seems like teachers are glorified as successful beings and mothers are considered unimportant laborers. In the first stanza, the mothers “labored/to gather the late apples (lines 2-3),” while “on the other shore/are those who wait…show more content… In the third stanza, the second line ends with “hang (line 2)” and is enjambed into the following line. By breaking the line after “hang (line 2),” the poet encourages the reader to ponder the word and its meaning. It can be interpreted in a number of ways. It can either be that the children hang on the teacher’s every word, or actually being hung. If interpreted as “the children are hanging on the teacher’s every word” it glorifies the teacher because the children respect their beliefs and look up to them so much that they listen to every word that drips from their lips. However, if looked at as if the children are literally “hung,” it disgraces teachers. It reiterates their strict aura as if going to school is like walking into something that makes them either want to die, or kills them itself. Either way, this inference is undoubtedly a negative one, supporting the idea that this poem degrades
