Life is filled with dreams. Kids always remain happy in their lives because they keep on dreaming constantly. “A Little Boy;s Dream” depicts the dream of a little boy who is sailing all alone on a boat. Katherine Mansfield by using the child as the subject managed to connote a deeper hidden meaning.
By way of depicting the dream of a little boy, the poet is actually telling the biggest reality of life. All of us have to walk in our journey of life alone. Yes we are surrounded by the people we love and the people who love us but still when we are born and when we die, we are alone. The poet by the means of a dream visualization of the boy, explains the biggest truth of life. The little boy says “Sea and sky, sea and sky, quietly on the deck I lie, having just a little rest”. Here the poet means that only the sea and sky are walking with him which are actually non- living things.
Living things in the sea, like fish for instance, also make a distance from the little boy. This is also a truth of real life. Only the nature walks with us when we are alone, all the living beings stay away. Nature is as a matter of fact, a man’s best friend. The little kid in his dream is sailing to far away unknown lands, in a similar manner in which life ,in reality unfolds in front of us. We are completely unaware of the circumstances which we have to face in the future but still we keep on moving.
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The little boy understands the truth of life in his dream itself. He also says “I have really done my best, In an awful pirate fight, but we captured them all right.” Here the poet means to say that in our journey called life, we give the best we can, as a result of which the outcomes occur. The more we are determined to work better, the better the results keep pouring. If we do not work for making our lives better we will stay the way we are. Most of us do the best of our capabilities and the results which we get are the results we actually deserve.
The poet also explains the significance of a mother’s love in the poem. The child wakes up from his dream and is scared to have witnessed loneliness. It is then that his mother comes and embraces him. However scared a child may be, but what is true is that once any child embraces his or her mother all the fear is lost. The fear is lost at least for the moment when the mother embraces the child or is around the child. The poet makes the child acquainted with the realities of life through a dream, while all the individuals in some way or the other, sooner or later get acquainted with what life is really all about.