Class 7 English Chapter 8: Paper Boats

A boy and a stream

Day by day, one by one, paper boats go down a running stream. The repetition is in the poem’s own first line, and it tells you this is a habit rather than an afternoon’s game.

He writes on them

His name, in big black letters, and the name of the village where he lives. The letters are big because a child has just made them, and the size is the sort of thing a child would mention.

And that turns a toy into a message

A boat with nothing written on it tells a finder nothing at all. The writing is what makes the voyage worth anything, and it shows what the boy actually wants.

The first hope

That somebody in some strange land will find a boat and know who he is. Not that the boat will arrive, and not that it will be admired. That he will be known by a stranger.

The cargo

He loads the little boats with shiuli flowers from the garden. Not shop flowers and not leaves. The ones growing where he lives, which belong to the same place as the name written on the paper. Address and cargo are saying one thing between them, and neither of them has to say it out loud.

Blooms of the dawn

That is his phrase for them, and shiuli do fall in the early morning. So the cargo is the beginning of a day, folded into a boat.

The second hope

That these blooms will reach land safely, and will do it at night. Something that belongs to a morning is to arrive at the end of a day, and the child does not point this out. The two words do it between them.

Then he looks up, and the picture is built

He launches a boat, raises his eyes, and sees the little clouds setting white bulging sails. The clouds are genuinely there. The sails are not, and the poem does not pretend otherwise. That is how every image here is made: something real first, and the imagined thing on top of it. A stream, then a voyage. Clouds, then sails. Because the real thing comes first, the picture feels discovered rather than made up.

A playmate he cannot see

He does not know, he says, what playmate of his in the sky sends the clouds down to race his boats. Not an angel and not a god: a playmate, which is the only kind of company a child needs.

And notice the race

The clouds are not helping the boats or blessing them. They are racing them, which is what another child would do. The sky has been turned into somebody his own age.

When night comes

He buries his face in his arms, which is the gesture of a boy going to sleep at a table or on a step, and he dreams. The poem moves from the stream to the inside of his head without any announcement.

The third hope

That the paper boats keep going, on and on, beneath the midnight stars. Not that they reach anywhere. That they keep going, all night, which no paper boat has ever done.

Who is sailing them

The fairies of sleep, and their lading is baskets full of dreams. The boy had loaded flowers; the dream reloads the boats with something he cannot carry himself.

Three hopes, growing

Be known by a stranger. Deliver flowers safely. Sail all night with fairies aboard. The first could happen. The second is unlikely. The third is not possible at all.

Where the poem turns inward

The gesture is worth a moment. Burying his face in his arms is what a tired child does at a table, and it both hides the world and makes a dark place to dream in. One action, and the poem has moved from a stream in daylight to the inside of a boy’s head without a word of transition.

And the poem never marks the change

There is no line saying that the boy is now dreaming rather than hoping. Each hope arrives in the same quiet voice as the last, which is exactly how a child’s hopes actually enlarge.

Why a child is the right speaker

A grown-up writing this would have to explain himself. He would say that he knew the boats would sink, or that the dream was only a dream. The child says neither, because he thinks neither, and that is the only voice in which three hopes of this size can be stated without any apology at all.

What the poem does not say

Whether any boat was ever found. The boy does not know and the poem will not guess, and that silence is why the three hopes stay hopes rather than becoming a story with an ending.

Scenario:

A coastal school asks each pupil to put a message in a sealed bottle and set it afloat. Lakshmi writes her name, her school and a question: what is the weather where you are? Mohit writes a long description of the sea and signs it with his initials. Nandita writes nothing at all and decorates the bottle instead. Six months later Lakshmi has a letter from a fisherman two hundred kilometres down the coast, answering her question and asking one of his own. Mohit hears nothing. Nandita’s bottle is found by a boy who keeps it on a shelf, not knowing where it came from or who to tell.

Analysis:

Three bottles went into the same sea and only one of them could ever have come back. Lakshmi gave a finder three things: who she was, where to reach her, and a reason to reply. Mohit gave beautiful writing and a pair of initials, which identify nobody; the finder had no way of answering even if he wanted to. Nandita gave the prettiest object and no information at all, so her bottle became an ornament rather than a message. The poem is doing exactly what Lakshmi did. The second line of it is not about folding or floating but about writing a name in big black letters and the name of the village, and the hope that follows is that somebody will know WHO HE IS. A child who thinks the poem is about boats will miss that the writing is the whole point, and that a blank boat could have told a finder nothing.

Activity:

Write a message you would put in a bottle, in three lines or fewer. Then give it to somebody and ask them what they would need in order to reply. Add whatever they say is missing.

Title:

Number the hopes, then test them

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The last instruction has no answer, and finding that out is the point. The poem gives no signal at all: the third hope arrives in the same quiet voice as the first, which is exactly how a child’s hopes actually enlarge. Marking the line is easy; proving the poem marked it is impossible.

Shiuli flowers open at night and fall in the early morning, which is why they are called the blooms of the dawn and why they are gathered from the ground rather than picked.

Lading is an old word for cargo, and it survives in the phrase a bill of lading, which is the document listing what a ship is carrying.

Tagore wrote a whole collection of poems in a child’s voice. The poems are not about children so much as spoken by one, which is why there is no grown-up in this poem to explain anything.

The three hopes — Be known, arrive safely, sail all night — Learn them in that order and the growth is obvious: a stranger finding a boat, flowers surviving a journey, and fairies at the helm under the stars.

Real first, imagined second — Clouds, then sails — Every image in the poem starts from something actually there. The clouds come before the sails and the stream before the voyage, which is what keeps the poem from being merely fanciful.

Four techniques, eight sentences

The poem is short and it is doing four separate things. There is repetition, there is alliteration, there are pictures, and there are symbols. A reader who only names them has done half the work.

Start with the theme

Innocence, imagination and playfulness. Those are the three. Notice that none of them is an event.

Why that matters

Almost nothing happens in this poem. A boy floats boats and falls asleep. The theme is carried by what he wants and how he speaks, which is why it can be there at all.

The setting

A stream, a garden, clouds, stars. No room, no street, no indoors of any kind. The whole poem is outdoors, and that openness is part of why the hopes can get so large.

Tone is his, mood is yours

The tone is gentle and wishful. The boy is not complaining and he is not boasting. He hopes, quietly, and then he hopes for more. The mood is thoughtful. A reader comes away thinking rather than laughing or grieving, and the reason is that we know something the boy does not: paper boats sink.

So tone and mood can differ

His attitude is hopeful. Our feeling is wistful. Pupils mix the two up all the time, and the cure is a question: whose feeling am I describing?

Repetition, first kind

Day by day. One by one. Both of them count, and counting is how the poem tells us this is a habit. A boy who had done it once would not need either phrase.

And a third thing counting buys

It tells you about the stream as well as the boy. A stream that has carried a boat every day for weeks is a stream he knows, with a bank he has a place on and a current he can predict. None of that is stated. The counting implies all of it.

Repetition, second kind

On and on. That one counts nothing. It stretches, which is exactly what a night feels like from inside a dream, and the boats go on sailing through all of it.

Alliteration

The repeating of a first sound in nearby words. Big black letters. The fairies of sleep are sailing. Say either aloud and your mouth makes the same shape twice.

What alliteration is for

It slows the phrase. The mouth works harder, the reader goes slower, and a slowed phrase is one that gets noticed. The poet puts it on the two things he most wants seen: the writing, and the fairies.

Imagery

Language that puts a picture in a reader’s mind. White bulging sails. The midnight stars. Big black letters on a paper boat. Each one can be seen, and none of them has to be explained.

Imagery is not the same as decoration

A decorative phrase could be removed and the sentence would stand. Remove the white bulging sails and the line has nothing left in it: the clouds were only there in order to become sails. The image is the content of that sentence rather than an ornament on it.

Why these images and not others

They are all things a child could actually look at. Nothing in the poem asks a reader to picture something abstract, which keeps the whole thing within the reach of the boy who is speaking.

Now the symbols

A symbol is a small thing standing for a large idea. The poem has three, and all three are objects the boy can hold or see.

The paper boats

They stand for his hopes, sent out to be found. Also for his innocence, since only a child would expect a sheet of paper to carry anything anywhere. Notice that both ideas fit the same object without crowding it. A hope is a fragile thing and so is wet paper, and the carelessness of sending one off downstream is the innocence. One symbol, two meanings, and neither of them has to be explained to a reader.

The flowers and the stars

The shiuli stand for purity and for the start of a new day. That second meaning is in the name he gives them, since shiuli fall at dawn. The midnight stars stand for a universe vast enough to make the whole voyage tiny. They are also the ceiling of his dream, so the smallest boat in the poem ends up sailing under the largest thing in it.

Naming is not the answer

An examiner asking about alliteration wants to know what it achieves. So: repetition counts, alliteration slows, imagery shows, and a symbol carries more than itself. Four effects, and each one is the real answer.

Scenario:

Two pupils answer the same question about this poem: identify one example of alliteration and explain its effect. Pranav writes that big black letters is alliteration because b is repeated. Ritika writes that big black letters is alliteration, that the repeated b makes the mouth work twice, and that the phrase therefore slows down just where the poem wants the writing noticed. Both answers are correct about the example. Ritika is given full marks and Pranav is given one. Their teacher writes the same comment on both scripts: name, example, effect.

Analysis:

Pranav did two of the three things. He identified the technique and he pointed at the right words, which is why he was not given nothing. What he left out is the only part that requires him to have thought about the poem rather than scanned it. Repeating a letter is a fact about spelling; slowing a phrase down is a fact about reading, and the examiner wants the second. Ritika went one step further and said where the slowing falls, which is on the line about the writing - the detail the poem most needs a reader to notice. That is the difference between spotting a device and understanding why it is there. The teacher’s three-word comment generalises to every technique in the chapter: repetition counts or stretches, imagery supplies a picture, a symbol carries an idea. In each case the effect is the answer and the label is only the way in.

Activity:

Take any two lines of a poem you know. Write a three-part answer about one technique in them: name, example, effect. Then cross out the effect and ask somebody how much they would give it.

Title:

Sort the repetitions, then test a symbol

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

Two of the three repetitions count and one stretches, and the one that stretches is in the dream. The symbol test is the harder half. Most first attempts put the object back in the blank, and noticing that is the point: a symbol you can only describe by naming it again has not yet been understood.

A poem can have a theme without a plot. Almost nothing happens in these eight sentences, and the theme is carried entirely by what the speaker wants and how he speaks.

Alliteration was once the main organising sound in English verse, long before rhyme arrived. Old English poems used it where a modern poem would use a rhyme at the line end.

Symbols are not invented by the poet alone. A boat has carried the idea of a journey for so long that a reader brings half the meaning with them, which is why the poem needs no explanation of it.

Tone against mood — Tone is his, mood is yours — Ask whose feeling you are describing. The speaker’s attitude is the tone; the feeling you are left with as a reader is the mood.

What each technique does — Repetition counts, alliteration slows, imagery shows, a symbol carries — Four effects in four words. Naming the technique earns nothing on its own; naming the effect is the answer an examiner is waiting for.

Two phrases from the poem

Blooms of the dawn. Fairies of sleep. Both of them join two nouns with the word of, and both do a surprising amount of work in three words.

How they work, and what they replace

The second noun describes the first. Blooms of the dawn tells you when the flowers come, and fairies of sleep tells you where the fairies belong. Write either one out in full and you get a clause: flowers that open in the early morning, fairies who live inside sleep. The of-phrase has done that work in three words, and more quietly than the clause manages.

Building your own

Take two nouns and put of between them. Cries of the children. Shadows of the clouds. Songs of the rain. Some of these will be good and some will not, and the reason is worth knowing.

The test

Ask whether the second noun could own or produce the first. Children do cry, so cries of the children works at once. Rain does not roar, so roars of the rain reads oddly.

Which is why some pairs surprise

Roars of the thunder works, because thunder roars. Glimmers of the rain works, because wet things glimmer. Tears of the clouds works too, since rain falls from them. The test gives you a reason rather than a feeling, and that matters more than it sounds: a reason can be argued about and a feeling cannot. If somebody tells you that roars of the rain is fine, you can ask them when they last heard rain roar.

Now the hours of the day

The poem uses dawn, night and midnight. English has at least sixteen such words, which is a great deal for one day.

Four for the morning

Dawn, daybreak, sunrise and sunup. All four name very nearly the same hour, and the differences are of feeling. Dawn is the quietest and sunup the plainest.

Five for the middle

Forenoon, noon, midday, noonday and noontime. Forenoon is the stretch before the middle; the other four are the middle itself.

Five for the evening, three for the night

Twilight, dusk, sunset, sundown and nightfall. Sunset names the event itself, and the other four name the light that follows it. Then night, night-time and midnight. Only midnight is an exact hour; the other two cover a stretch of several hours, which is why you can do something all night and not all midnight.

Why keep so many

Because a writer chooses for the feeling. A poem that said sunup instead of dawn would be a different poem, although the hour would be the same, and nobody could say the information had changed.

One word that goes in two columns

Twilight happens twice. There is a twilight before sunrise and a twilight after sunset, so it can honestly be put in the morning column or the evening one.

Now the opposites

Strange and ordinary. Dawn and dusk. Launch and halt. Bulging and shrinking. Float and sink. Lading and emptying.

Why an opposite is a good test

Because reaching for one forces you to say what the word actually means. Bulging becomes clear the moment you think of shrinking, and lading becomes clear the moment you think of emptying. There is a trap in both of those, though. Swelling looks like an answer for bulging and loading looks like one for lading, and each is a synonym rather than an opposite. An opposite has to reverse the word, not repeat it.

And what failing the test tells you

That you have only half met the word. If no opposite comes, the meaning is still vague, and that is useful information rather than a failure.

A diary entry, and what it needs

Four things. The day, the date and the time at the top, so the entry can be placed. A general sentence about the day. Then the details. Then a closing remark.

Why the details matter most

The general sentence could belong to any day. It was humid, or it rained. Only the details make it that day and no other, and a diary with no details is a calendar. The test is to read your entry back a week later. If nothing in it reminds you which day it was, the details were missing, and no amount of feeling in the closing remark will supply them.

Where this topic meets that one

A diary entry needs all three things in its opening lines. A time word to fix the hour, an of-phrase if you want a picture, and the right word rather than its near neighbour. The writing task is where the word work gets used.

Scenario:

A school weather club writes a daily note for the notice board. On Monday Shruti writes that the rain began at daybreak and stopped by forenoon. On Tuesday Tarun writes that the rain began at sunup and stopped by noontime. On Wednesday Umang writes that it rained in the morning. The games teacher, planning practice, finds Shruti’s note useful and Umang’s useless, and complains that Tarun’s sounds like a cowboy film. All three notes were accurate. The club decides to keep a list of the time words with a note beside each one about how it sounds.

Analysis:

Three notes, all true, and only one of them did its job. Umang gave the right information in the widest possible word. Morning covers five hours, and a teacher deciding whether to move practice needs an hour rather than a half-day. Shruti picked daybreak and forenoon, which fix the hours closely and sound neutral on a notice board. Tarun was just as precise, since sunup and noontime name the same hours, and he lost on feeling rather than on fact; the words belong to a different kind of writing and the reader noticed. That is the whole case for keeping sixteen words. The hour is the information and the sound is the choice, and a writer who ignores the second will be accurate and still wrong for the page. The club’s list is the right response: not a ranking of the words, but a note on what each one sounds like.

Activity:

Write one sentence about today using the widest time word you can. Then rewrite it twice, with two different narrow words. Ask somebody which version they would put on a notice board.

Title:

Build six phrases, then break two

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The two deliberate failures are the useful part. Making a phrase fail on purpose shows you that the test is about the world rather than about the words: rain cannot roar whatever a writer wants, and that is a fact about rain. The disagreements with your partner will nearly all be about borderline cases, where the second noun could just about own the first.

Twilight happens twice a day, once before sunrise and once after sunset, which is why it is the one time word that can be put in two columns honestly.

Lading survives almost nowhere in modern English except in a bill of lading, the shipping document that lists what a vessel is carrying.

An of-phrase is one of the oldest ways English has of joining two nouns, and it is why a great many book titles are built that way.

Testing an of-phrase — Can the second noun own the first? — Children can own cries, so cries of the children works. Rain cannot own roars, so roars of the rain does not. One question settles any pairing.

The four morning words — Dawn, daybreak, sunrise, sunup — All four mean nearly the same hour, and the differences are of feeling rather than of time. Dawn is the quietest and sunup is the plainest.