WILLIAM SOUTAR 'PARABLE'

WILLIAM SOUTAR: ‘PARABLE’

                                Two neighbors, who were rather dense,

                                                Considered that their mutual fence

                                                Were most symbolic of their peace

                                                (Which they maintained should never cease)

                                    5          If each about his home and garden

                                                Set up a more substantial warden.

                                                Quickly they cleared away the fence

                                                To build a wall at great expense

                                                And soon their little plots of ground

     10       Were barricaded all around:

                                                Yet still they added stone to stone,

                                                As if they would be done,

                                                For when our neighbor seemed to tire

                                                The other shouted: Higher! Higher!

                                    15       Thus day by day, in their unease,

                                                They built the battlements of peace

                                                Whose shadows, like a gathering blot,

                                                Darkened on each neglected plot,

                                                Until the ground, so overcast

                                    20       Because a rank and weedy waste

                                                Now in obsession, they uproar;

                                                Jealous, and proud, and full of fear:

                                                And, lest, they halt for lack of stone,

                                                They pull their dwelling-hoses down.

                                    25       At last, by their insane excess,

                                                Their rampart guard a wilderness,

                                                And hate, arousing out of shame,

                                                Flares up into a wondrous flame:

                                                They curse; they strike; they break the wall.

                                    30       Which buries them beneath its falls?

POET’S BACKGROUND

  

Born on 28 April, 1898 at Perth (then a country of Central Scotland), William Soutar was a prolific and celebrated Scottish writer. Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Soutar suffered poor heath for a long time. He subsequently became paralytic and died eventually in 1943. Despite his short invalid life, Soutar was able to establish himself as a literally prodigy. His publication include: Conflict, Seed in the Wind, The Solitary Way, A Handful of Earth, Riddle in Scots, The Expectant Silence, etc. In his memory and honour, Collected Poems of Soutar and Diaries of A Dying Man were posthumously published.

BACKGROUND TO THE POEM  

‘Parable’, like Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’, is written as a reaction to the popular English axiom: ‘Good fences make good neighbors’’. As its title, the poem is indeed a parable because it narrates a simple story designed to teach a moral lesion. The two poems were written at about the same time, and they take a more philosophical look at the aphorism: ‘Good fences make good neighbors’ which they consider ed untrue. This is why Soutar calls the wall, ‘the battlement of peace’ (line 16) rather than the haven of peace.

This poem tells the story of two dense, proud and jealous neighbors who thought that their peaceful coexistence was made possible by the fence separating their plots of land. In order to strengthen their good neighborliness, they considered it necessary to clear off the fence and replaced it with a wall. The two neighbors became so excessively obsessed by the fear of outlived that they were jealous of each other, hated rather than loved each other, and in disagreement; they broke the wall which fell on them and buried them up.

Building the wall became, at last, a total waste of time, efforts and money. In fact, the neighbors had no time to do other things, to the existence that their plots became overgrown with weeds but they concentrated on building a wall which finally consumed their lives.

THEME

In a tone which is both condemnatory and didactic, the poem clearly articulates the following themes among others:

(a)   That good fence does not necessarily make good neighbors as commonly supposed.

(b) That man is never contented with whatsoever he has, and seeks to acquire more and more until he dies.

(c)  That jealousy, pride, and hatred are factors that have been responsible for most of man’s catastrophe.

(d) That a great deal of man’s unnatural death is caused by man’s own creation or invention.

All these themes are interconnected, and they boil down to the fact that man has no rest until he dies. The poem intends to show the danger inherent in being obsessive of one possession, especially when it borders on someone else’s. Let us remember the untold death and destruction that have been suffered by communities and nations over boundary disputes. Nigeria versus Cameroon over Bakasi is still fresh in our memory.

FORM AND STRUCTURE

The poem has 30 lines of unequal length. Though it is not segmented into stanzas, the poem has a rhyming         pattern of the heroic couplet – every two lines in succession rhyme. The use of punctuation marks is prominently employed so as to guide the oral rendition of the poem. Because it is a simple narrative poem, the narration follows the logical sequential pattern of storytelling. It begins by introducing the neighbors, talk about their activates and their ultimate end. The poem, therefore, is a complete story which has a discernible beginning and an end. In addition, the poet is able to keep the audience in suspense by gradually unfolding the story; by this device he is able to sustain the reader’s attention to the end.

The poem also has a plot because the events are logically connected and, in fact, every situation or event serves to carry the storyline forward.

LANGUAGE AND TECHNIQUE

The language of the poem is simple but replete with figurative meanings. As the title of the poem suggests, a parable is not to be interpreted or understood only at the literal level because it usually has a deep moral lesson which it teaches. And the technique employed in this poem is that of logical sequential mode of narration because it is a narrative poem. Among the figure of speech employed are:                                

                                    Alliteration:                        lines 1, 2, 5, 11, 15, 16, 20, and 22

                                    Assonance:              lines 3, 11, 27, etc.

                                    Personification:     line 27 and 28

                                    Climax:                      line 29

                                    Simile:                       line 17

                                    Hyperbole:              line 26

The imagery used in the poem is appropriate in conjuring the social and physical environment of the setting as in the images of:

(a)  Envious and desperate bricklayers.

(b) Overgrown heavily walled parcels of land.

(c)  Catastrophe.

In the final analysis, the poem tells of the calamities that are brought upon humanity through man’s jealous, pride, discontentment, obsession, daftness, and hatred. The language of the poem is simple and appropriate to the story it tells. However, the use of ‘dense’ in line 1 is ambiguous.

REVISION QUESTIONS

1.     Compare and contrast this poem and Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’.

2.     Comment on the technique of this poem in relation to its content.

3.     What are the major themes discussed in the poem?

4.     Dis the universal implication of the poem.

5.     Examine the figurative use of language in this poem.

By Eguriase S. M. Okaka.