[continued from previous message]   
      
   > fun of playing with the other children?  I don't know.  I'm guessing   
   > that he was, because many children had gardens that they tended every   
   > day.  I certainly did.  I would spend an hour or so tending my garden   
   > every morning -- along with my mother and siblings.  I loved my garden   
   > and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  I was also allowed to play with   
   > the local kids who would drop by on an almost daily basis.   
      
   That sounds like a little flowerbed. Suffice it to say, both my father's   
   garden and my own were produce gardens, where we grew virtually all our   
   own vegetables. So it was a much bigger task, which took me at least a   
   couple of hours a day (and pretty much every day when school was out);   
   and again, like you, I could not simply drop everything and go off to   
   play during that time. There was plenty of times though that my friends   
   were doing work and my sister and I were the ones playing; and even more   
   when we all had free time and could play together.   
      
   > Little George's next stanza opens with the line "That room's all   
   > changed" implying either that the garden is a room, or that he is taking   
   > the reader on a walking tour of his childhood house.  This appears to be   
   > another problem caused by switching the kitchen and garden stanzas'   
   > position in the narrative.   
      
   The "problem" seems to be caused by your either: (1) not realizing the   
   speaker could have been looking "outside" through a window; or (2) your   
   constant attempts, in your guise as literary critic, to find errors in   
   the poem. The garden stanza is deliberately s5 (the mid stanza of the   
   poem), for reasons I'll have to explain.   
      
   There are two stanzas where the D line is a rhymes perfectly with the   
   A-B lines; s5 and s9. The reason that the failure of the others to   
   rhyme, as I'm sure I've explained to you before, is to subliminally   
   reinforce the idea that Bob is having trouble completing his thoughts.   
   Whereas in s5 and s9 he does bring his thoughts to a conclusion; in s5   
   he realizes that (IHO) he's been deprived as a child, and in s9 he   
   realizes that he wants to be rid of those memories.   
      
   > I'm assuming that it's the living room,   
   > although Little George neither specifies nor gives us any other clue   
   > than that it contains a chair on which he is forbidden to sit.   
      
   Actually, the room contains one chair in which Bob is allowed to sit.   
   But, yes, it's the living room. I don't know how things were in your   
   home, but in mine and most of the one's I've encountered, the living   
   room was where the family sat together. (In Britain it's actually called   
   the "sitting room").   
   > IIRC,   
   > George Dance stated that while he was also barred from using the living   
   > room furniture, the parental description of boys as "filthy things" was   
   > derived from the life of another boy that he knew.   
      
   There was in fact only one place for the children to sit in my family's   
   living room, though it was a couch (for all the children), not a   
   separate chair.   
      
   > Last stop on the tour is the bedroom.  Little George is sent there after   
   > dinner every night where he feels as if he is trapped within a tomb --   
   > alone and forced to pass the time quietly playing by himself.  "Each   
   > night" at 9pm, Little George was forced to turn out the lights,   
      
   Yes, I was, but "Each night" is a bit of an exaggeration; that was   
   actually each night in which I had school (or something equally   
   important) the next day. On weekends and in the summer, I could stay up   
   later, and go outside after dinner until dark, and that was all free   
   time. Once again, if I were relating an autobiography (which it looks   
   like you've forced me to do) I'd have mentioned those exceptions, but as   
   I was not recounting my memories but Bob's, I had him exaggerate.   
      
   > and lie   
   > face down in bed with his pajama pants pulled down and his bare behind   
   > awaiting his father's belt.  George Dance hasn't said that this bedtime   
   > ritual occurred on a daily basis in real life, but has intimated that   
   > the "spankings" (which he refused to call "whippings" even though the   
   > blows were delivered with a belt) frequently took place.   
      
   Well, being "whipped" (to use your preferred term though there was no   
   whip involved) took place too often for my liking, but I certainly   
   wouldn't call it a "bedtime ritual" (which does make it sound like it   
   happened on some fixed schedule irrespective of how I behaved). And Bob   
   clearly states that that happened only "some nights".   
      
   > So, pretty much the entire "flashback" portion of the poem was based on   
   > real events from George Dance's childhood.  Some of the events may have   
   > been slightly exaggerated, or enhanced, for dramatic purposes, and one   
   > item was interpolated from another boy's stories about his own   
   > childhood.   
      
   No, I did not say I got the expression "boys can be such filthy things"   
   from another boy's account to me. IIRC, it was just something I read   
   somewhere. I did a lot of reading as a child and as a young adult, and a   
   lot of the speakers' "memories" and other thoughts use what I've read   
   (and simply imagined) as well as what I directly experienced.   
      
   > This leaves the "modern" portions of the narrative which   
   > frame the flashback portion.   
      
   I don't think you can separate the poem like that. Bob's actions, and   
   Bob's memories, are fully integrated - you cannot separate the memories   
   from the fact that Bob's remembering them.   
      
   > In the modern portion, it is strongly   
   > implied (by George Dance's own explanation) that the speaker is   
   > receiving some form of psychiatric care, and is probably residing in a   
   > mental hospital.   
      
   I thought that was an interesting touch from the beginning, though (as I   
   made it clear in previous explanations) there is no reason to think,   
   from the fact that Bob was in the house with permission, that he was in   
   a mental hospital or that he was under psychiatric care. His mental   
   state is obviously disturbed - as noted, he has difficulty staying on   
   one subject and drawing conclusions - but I think those could follow   
   from the situation (he's experiencing childhood memories that he'd   
   rather not) rather than his own mental state.   
      
   > He has permission to leave the grounds during the day,   
   > and (unrealistically) to visit his childhood home that is now occupied   
   > by another family.   
      
   Yes, the idea that someone confined to a mental hospital would be given   
   a day pass to go off on a road trip by himself is very "unrealistic" and   
   (while I liked it being as possibility) it's not a very logical   
   possibility. I believe you went for it because you wanted to and went on   
   to claim that Bob broke into the house, and you had to get rid of the   
   idea that he had permission to be there.   
      
   "Grownup George" ends the poem by expressing his   
   > wish that he would like to burn his father's house to the ground.   
      
   So Bob does. It's a very dramatic ending, which could make a reader   
   think that he was a psycho -- iff the reader had already decided he was   
   a psycho. Which is why I had Bob daydream about being able to buy the   
   house and burn it, rather than simply start looking for matches and   
   gasoline. As I said, I wanted to balance things and let the reader draw   
   her own conclusions.   
      
   > The framing story, is obviously fictional insofar as real life George   
   > Dance is not living in a mental institution, and is not (to the best of   
   > my knowledge) undergoing psychiatric care.   
      
   As I say, it's impossible to separate the two. The Bob who's walking   
   through the house, and looking out the window, is the same Bob who's   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)