Analyzing Childhood, a Poem by Markus Natten

 

The poem, Childhood by Markus Natten describes three important stages that a child goes through while on the journey toward adulthood. The first stanza asks, ‘When did my childhood go?’ and the answer to this is that it was the moment in his life when he ‘realised that Hell and Heaven could not be found in Geography’. This is the reality phase in a growing child's life, an understanding about the difference between fact and fiction, fantasy and reality.

The second stage in the life of a child’s growth into maturity according to the second stanza lies in the realization about the fallibility and hypocrisy of adults. The child becomes aware of the fact that ‘adults [are] not all they [seem] to be’ because they don’t act what they preach. They talk about ‘love’ but do ‘not act so lovingly’.

The third stage in the child’s journey into maturity starts when he or she realizes that his or her ‘mind was really mine’ and that he or she is free to choose to use his or her mind the way he or she chooses to. This is the age of choice, the age of identity, a stage where one learns to make one’s own decisions and be responsible for the consequences.

The fourth stanza is different from the three preceding stanzas because it starts with the word ‘where’ a conjunction that introduces an idea of place, location, or position of an object, in this case, childhood. This is unlike the previous three stanzas that introduced the idea of time. That last stanza introduces a note of uncertainty, and doubt suggesting a sense of nostalgia and sentimentality for the golden moment in one’s life. He only knows that one can gain an impression or a glimpse of childhood in an ‘infant’s face’.