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A Childs Christmas In Wales Literary Essay

Sam Dean

Midyear Exam

9th Grade English

 

A Childs Christmas In Wales Literary Analysis

Reliving a Childs Christmas In Wales 

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The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear

~Buddy The Elf

 

 

A man’s recollection of his childhood Christmas’s in Wales, sums up A Childs Christmas In Wales, by: Dylan Thomas well. He ponders back to his childhood as a mischievous boy in Wales, remembering the good, and the crazy parts of Christmas. He brings the Christmas feel from Wales to life using his imagination, and also many of the sentence building structures we have learned in Fitz’s class. He describes in depth what he recalls of witnessing Christmas through the imaginative eyes of a child in Wales.

Imagination is like the muscular verbs of our real world. It creates images for us and helps us see further than what just our eye can see. The boy in Wales  experiences Christmas as any normal person would, except he uses his young imagination to enhance the special feel of Christmas for himself, and for the reader. The boy from Wales is experiencing playing outside in the snow, and recalling what it was like in the past years playing with his brother. Except something is different, “that was not the same snow” he exclaims, hinting that he is now using his imagination to see things different, and seeing past what is just in front of his eyes.

 

Snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards.

 

The boy uses muscular verbs, like minutely and ivied, to strengthen this scene, making it captivating and interesting. He also used similes, comparing snow settling on a postman to a thunderstorm of Christmas cards, adding detail to this description.

 

Within the good times, unexpected things are bound to happen. During a jolly and peaceful part of the year in Wales, something interesting happens which adds a little spice to the story. “We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.” The boy was carrying on with his mischievous, fun day when something unexpected happened to Mrs. Prothero, a local in Wales. The boy and his friend were running through a garden carrying mounds of snowballs, which they planned to throw at the neighborhood cats for some excitement, when suddenly Mrs. Prothero shouted, and the boys could smell the smoke from a fire. 

 

“Fire!” cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong. And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii.

 

The boy had described this crazy, unexpected scene using muscular verbs and similes. “Bombilating” a word the boy uses to describe a dinner-gong as it set fire, is a small detail that added emphasis and excitement to the wild scene. Also, he used a simile to compare Mrs. Prothero’s yelling to a town crier in Pompeii.

 

What’s a childhood without mischief? During a time of the year where everyone is supposed to be all jolly and kind, The boy from Wales and his friend Jim are out causing mischief. Everyone loves to throw snowballs, whether your hurling them at your friends or aiming for trees, it is always fun. However, The two boys found a new way to use snowballs. The two boys set up station in Mrs. Prothero’s garden as they lined up snowballs to hurl at mean, nasty creatures... cats. They patiently waited for the chance to hurl a snowball at the cats as they hop over the garden walls, fortunately for the cats they do not get the chance. 

 

Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

 

The boy makes his simple acts of mischief sound like a deadly hunting scene from a movie with his metaphors and muscular verbs. He described the regular sized house cats as “sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling. Although it was a slight exaggeration, it completely intensified the scene.

 

A man puts himself into his own shoes, but as a child; he reconnects with the imagination of a child, bringing him back to old Christmases in Wales; he uses descriptions, essential details, muscular verbs, similes and metaphors to bring the reader into his childhood with him, and to capture the mischief, unexpectedness, and joy of a child's Christmas in Wales

 

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