Analysis Of Mutterings Over The Crib Of A Deaf Child

James Wright’s, “Mutterings Over the Crib of a Deaf Child,” discusses concerns held about a child born with a disability, and the challenges he may face in everyday life. The poem itself acts as a dialogue spoken between two people, and each stanza offers the perspective of each person. One person highlights everyday scenarios that questions the child’s ability to cope, and the other answers each scenario with their own perspective. While the imagery in Wright’s poem illustrates several examples of everyday life that will test the disabled child’s perseverance, the depicted scenarios also mean to elicit an emotional response from the reader. Specifically, Wright uses this imagery to inspire feelings of helplessness in one regard, and invokes feelings of confidence to respond in kind.

Wright wastes no time in setting the tone with scenarios that invoke a feeling of helplessness, starting with the first verse in the poem.

The first question asks:” How will he hear the bell at school,” to create the visual a child, without the ability to discern when the afternoon starts without the audible chime of a school bell. Without this cue, how will the child know when to “run across cool grasses,” or “understand the day is gone?” Another scenario questions the child’s ability to wake up “at morning.” The premise appears to be, because the child lacks the faculties to hear his mother call for him, the child won’t know to awaken. His mother has other tasks, and children, to attend in the morning, and the child, “never stirs when he is shaken.” If the child sleeps so heavily that he doesn’t respond to the touch of another attempting to wake him up, then it almost comes across as hopeless to

try.
Each question asked merits a response in kind, as the other party in this dialogue is quick to instill a sense of confidence that the child will find his way just fine. Someone, whether it is him or another, “will take measure of the clock,” even though he doesn't hear the chime of the bell. While the child cannot hear, his eyesight works just fine. It is also his eyesight that will tell him when it’s time to go home because, “he will see the birchen boughs outside sagging dark from the sky.” The response to the child being a hard sleeper draws similar comparisons. While he may not respond to being forcibly shaken to stir awake, he will still respond to changes in the air temperature. The explanation offered states: “Sometimes you could feel the dawn begin,” and “the fire would call you,” to argue that though the child finds himself impaired in one sense, he isn’t incapable. He still possesses other senses that offer him the ability to mostly function as a normal human being.
Even though the child stands to face more adversity in his life than his peers, how perilous his life will become lies with the two standing over his crib. Ultimately, the theme of this work suggests that the ability to overcome adversity depends on the level of support one has around them. A person becomes helpless if they’re treated as such, just as they’re as capable of being self-sufficient with a confident supporting cast. Just as when the poem questions what will happen when the boy’s “finger bleeds,” it states, “he will learn pain” in response. Other than an inability to hear sound, a reason to treat this child completely different from any other child fails to surface, and there lies the point that Wright wants to convey. In the last stanza where the voice of confidences states: “And lift him into my arms and sing whether he hears my song or not,” conveys that. Whether deaf or not, they are muttering over the crib of a child, and that child deserves no less than the love and support of his parents.