The Hunchback In The Park
A Comparison
‘The
Hunchback In The Park’ (written by Dylan Thomas in 1941) is seemingly a poem
written about, as the name suggests, a hunchback who lives in a park. However,
when looked at closely, it appears to also be linked to Peter Pan, arguably the
most famous work by J.M.Barrie, and the overall life of the author.
Peter
Pan was released as a book, then a play, a few years before Thomas was born,
meaning that by his childhood it would have gained enough popularity to be
fairly prominent in Thomas’ early years, possibly influencing the ‘Hunchback’.
Alongside this, his poem could refer to J.M.Barrie himself, and possible fears
of Barrie.
Barrie
was born in Scotland, and did not move to England until he was in his twenties.
Even as a grown man, he identified best with children, and was regarded as a
fellow playmate when he played with them in Kensington Gardens. Though this
almost suggests a darker side to his nature, it is more likely that Barrie had
a form of autism- he couldn’t connect as well to adults. Although Barrie was
married for a time, the marriage was an unhappy one- it is suspected that he
was asexual.
With
this is mind, the first lines of the poem start to make more sense: ‘The hunchback in the park/A solitary
mister’ could refer to Barrie having an impediment that meant he was not
often included- for the poem, Thomas has used a more obvious impediment than an
inability to interact. The line about a solitary mister backs this up- among
adults, he was quite solitary. The use of solitary also fits in with the view
of Barrie having been asexual- in his time, it was standard for men to marry
and have children. Being unlikely to reproduce may have been regarded as
solitary (although, it must be stressed, that asexual does not stop nonsexual
attraction).
‘From the opening of the garden lock’
tells us that Barrie was always there, both in the park and for the children in
general- they always had their playmate to turn to. However, the ‘Sunday sombre bell at dark’ signifies
the end of playtime, as the children and Barrie must stop playing and go back
to life. For Barrie, this is a very sombre time- he doesn’t want to stop
playing, much in the same way that Peter Pan doesn’t want to grow up.
‘The fountain basin where I sailed my ship’
gives a feel of a larger, more adventurous world- maybe one that Barrie,
having lived predominantly in Scotland, wanted to explore, but felt that he was
confined, as if in a fountain basin.
The
final two lines in the second stanza, ‘Slept
at night in a dog kennel/But nobody chained him up’ make little sense if
taken literally; but once thought about a little more closely, they seem to
reflect a feeling of people being welcoming, but Barrie lacking a complete
ability to fully interact with this welcoming, leading to an almost
humiliation. This could also be a reference to the scene in Peter Pan where Mr
Darling sleeps in the dog kennel out of choice.
‘Like the park birds he came early/Like the
water he sat down’ shows again how much of an important aspect of the park
Barrie is- he blends in, like the children, like the regular fixtures in the
park.
However,
it is just after these lines that the tone changes, and further insight and
thought is needed to gain a deeper meaning. It seems that Thomas has claimed
artistic licence to think about the what
ifs. What if Barrie had a deep
fear of his friends growing up and leaving him, like Wendy and the Lost Boys
leave Peter? The next part of the poem seems based on this fear- the fear of
growing up that was so strong in Peter, and is therefore reasonably likely to
have been at least a small part of Barrie himself.
With
this in mind, ‘And mister they called
Hey mister/The truant boys from town’ alludes to his friends growing up,
and becoming truants from childhood- going to the busy town of adulthood.
Truant boys could also have a connection to the Lost Boys and the way they went
from being truants of growing up to truants of Neverland.
In line
with this, ‘Running when he had heard
them clearly/On out of sound’ is Barrie realising he’s lost his friends,
and shows the way they’ve completely turned on him. This idea is continued in
the next stanza, as the boys continue to taunt, even going as far as to mock
the impediment that drew them to him- ‘Hunchbacked
in mockery’.
The
fifth stanza is very interesting- it starts with the phrase ‘old dog sleeper’, which is reminiscent
of Nana, the children’s dog and nanny in Peter Pan. It then continues with ‘Alone between nurses and swans’. This
could refer to the way he’s now completely alone in the park, but it could also
be a reference to the nurses in the park that lose their children in the park,
and the swans that resemble the magic of Neverland- and the way that he’s
alone, stuck between both.
The
rest of this stanza (‘While the boys among willows/Made the tigers jump out of their eyes/To roar
on the rockery stones/And the groves were blue with sailors’) has no specific meaning-
it just describes imagination in general, and how Barrie’s own inventions seem
to be coming back to haunt him. The first two lines of this section could also
allude to Tiger Lily, the Neverland princess.
‘Made all day until bell time’, at the beginning of the next
stanza, probably relates to the school bell, calling the children away- or even
a bell rung around the garden, telling everyone to go. However, it could also
be metaphorical, with the day being childhood, and the bell being adulthood,
signifying the beginning of the end.
In this stanza, a ‘woman figure without fault’ is
mentioned. The obvious character from this is Wendy, Peter Pan’s friend. Wendy is portrayed as being both womanly yet
innocent, though a large part of the storyline involves her wish to grow up,
faced with Peter’s want to remain a child forever. ‘Straight as a young elm/Straight and tall from his crooked bones’
could refer to the whole book of Peter Pan- a tale of innocence coming from
Barrie, a remarkable man. From a lot of what is written, Barrie seems a very
humble person- crooked bones could indicate this.
Finally the last two
lines of this stanza are ‘That she might
stand in the night/After the locks and chains’. In this context, these
lines have two possible meanings. The first is fairly straightforward, and
relates to practically every human- that Barrie wants to create something that
will last after his death, and be remembered after the locks and chains have
been put on his life. The novel Peter Pan is his attempt at this.
However, there is
another possible connection, that comes from the initial origin of the name
‘Wendy’. The name didn’t exist until Peter Pan was released- and Barrie took it
from a friend of his, a young girl who tried calling him ‘my friendy’ but could
never quite pronounce it, resulting in the term ‘my Wendy’. This girl died when
she was five, but evidently meant a lot to Barrie- he named one of his
principal characters after her name for him. Thus, the last two lines of stanza
six could relate to him missing the girl, and wishing there could be some way
she could have lasted past the locks and chains put on her.
Stanza seven starts with a description of the
park- ‘All night in the unmade
park/After the railings and shrubberies/The birds the grass the trees the lake’-
which sounds quite confused and unusual. This brings to mind the thoughts of a
young child, with an inability to fully order or sort their thoughts. The line
leads onto ‘And the wild boys innocent
as strawberries/Had followed the hunchback’ which seems to suggest that
whatever the boys have done, they are now forgiven- it’s in their wild nature,
and really they are innocent and fresh. They’ve gone back to Barrie, and he is
reunited with them, his fears assuaged, at least for the time being.
The
poem ends with the line ‘To his kennel
in the dark’- Barrie is back where he feels he belongs. This echoes the
earlier feeling of humiliation- not only is he in a kennel (previously
referenced to Peter Pan) he is also in the dark, another connotation to
humiliation. However, it seems that this is where he is happiest- though many
wouldn’t choose it, the important part for him is that his boys are back, and
nothing else matters.
In
conclusion, it appears that the interpretation of The Hunchback In The Park as
Thomas looking at the possible feelings of Barrie is fairly valid- though it
may not be correct, and is certainly not the only way of looking at it, it has
reason and depth. Thomas, being a notorious alcoholic, perhaps envied the
childlike nature of Barrie, and felt resonance with his life and his possible
feelings- eventually deciding to immortalise this in a poem.
Whatever
the reader’s opinion, the poem is certainly powerful, and popular in it’s own
right- enough to have carried through in literary heritage to the 21st
century.
Thank you for
reading.