ANALYSIS: RISING FIVE
Rising Five by Norman Nichlolas Describes how life and time changes from birth, to
childhood, adulthood and old age. The poem starts in a very simple manner with an
innocent remark`of a four-year-old. The first stanza describes a little boy who is
annoyed at being called four. His perspective on the matter is different. “‘I'm rising
five’, he said, ‘not four’”. ‘Little coils of hair un-clicked themselves upon his head’ this
gives us an impression of him tossing his head in a stubborn manner. He believes
that he could sound more important by being called ‘rising five’, by growing up. This
could be assumed to be amusing as the comment is a gullible one, typical of all
young children. The boy represents people and their constant desire to grow, with
the thought that maturity would give them more freedom, opportunities and better
choices in life. This is where the word ‘rising’ starts repeating after the end of every
stanza.
The second stanza opens with the boy, standing in a field during late spring. This
verse contains a lot of imagery speed of the vegetation’s growth crammed into a
couple of months as ‘the cells of spring bubbled and doubled’. Everything is bursting
with joy, buds spread open their leaves and petals, crinkly and immature as each
‘shoot and stem shook out the creases from their frills’. I think the plant represents
the little boy, the plant is still growing, it is blossoming but it has not formed into a
proper fruit yet. This stanza describes the process of a fruit in making, the same way,
the boy is growing u and developing but he is still not grown enough or is still not an
adult yet.
In The third 'stanza' which is not exactly a stanza but a few lines, the poet portrays
afternoon as almost evening which is almost night. 'the dust dissected the tangential
light' imagery is used in this sentence, we could see this as afternoon, where bright
sunlight is to be seen in a particular angle and we can see the dust particles dancing
in it. 'not day, but rising night. Not now but rising soon', this could be seen as how
people hesitate, how sometimes they are indecisive. The dust particles could be
seen as hesitation. How they procrastinate. They don't want to do anything the
moment but wait till they believe the time is right, or it could be seen as how people
rush to pass the day, to grow up, and always think about the consequences, the
future instead of living in the moment.
‘the new buds push the old leaves from the bough’ this line of the last stanza, the
buds represent the children and the old leaves represent the adults. As the children
are born, they become more important than the adults, they become the centre of
attention. Children and adolescents are anxious to become adults and do more ‘adult
things’. ‘We drop our youth behind us like a boy throwing away his toffee-wrapper’,
the wrappers are unwanted and unimportant so they get thrown away just like
people rushing to become adults and not considering or focusing on the process of
growing up.
‘We never see the the flower, but only the fruit in the flower; never the fruit but only
the rot in the fruit’, the ‘flower’ is a young child, looking for the ‘fruit’ which is
adulthood. But when in the stage of ‘fruit’, we start to worry about ‘rotting’, we start to
worry about getting old. ‘We look for marriage bed in the baby’s cradle, we look for
grave in bed’, cradle, marriage bed and grave are all common rest places in different
stages of life but people cannot rest in them as they are too busy thinking about the
future.’Not living, but rising dead’, the poet describes life as not living but nearing our
death.To conclude the poem deals with the thought of forgetting to ‘live’, and not
appreciating life. How people are never happy are never happy with what they have,
and their thirst for more never ends. The poem is a subtle criticism of humanity and
its faults.
