Forgotten Languages Shel Silverstein Analysis

Every child has a unique viewpoint of the world and an extraordinary imagination, where something as simple as a rock can be the catalyst to creating a whole new world. This viewpoint and imagination diminishes as you get older, until it become nonexistent as an adult. “Forgotten Languages” written by Shel Silverstein, is a powerful poem that uses personification, and vivid imagery to capture what life being a child is like. It also perfectly captures a transitional period between your childhood, and becoming an adult. Where you can try to look back, and remember the worlds you created and the sense of wonder you had, but you can truly never recapture it. Silverstein also shows with his choice of words, that when you do look

To go back to a time when you didn’t have any responsibilities, and the biggest source of drama was wondering whether you had the coolest toys, or newest videogame station. However it is easy to ask oneself whether instead of pining over the past, should we instead we look back at it with nostalgia and realized how fortunate we are to have had those experiences. That is a dichotomy that is wrestled with throughout the poem, you can see Silverstein wrestling with that dichotomy with both the first three lines of the poem, and the final three lines of the poem. With the first three lines “Once I spoke the language of the flowers, / Once I understood each word the caterpillar said, / Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,” (Silverstein 1-3) there is a sense of wonder, and astonishment dripping throughout every word. Silverstein seems to be relishing with every opportunity to bask in the experiences he had as a child, and his enthralling imagination. Compared to the final three lines of the poem “Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . ./ How did it go? / How did it go?” (Silverstein 10-12) in only seven lines the tone has changed dramatically, here Silverstein is pining for the past while desperately trying to recapture that same imagination that he has since lost. I believe this mimics real life, because the difference between pining and nostalgia is only a matter of perspective. Within a few seconds someone can go from having deep happy thoughts about a specific time in the past, to wishing with all their heart that it can come