Here’s a full breakdown of ‘Prayer Before Birth’ by Louis Macneice, tailored towards GCSE / IGCSE students but also useful for those studying at a higher level. Enjoy!
Includes:
VOCABULARY
STORY/SUMMARY
SPEAKER/VOICE
LANGUAGE
STRUCTURE/FORM
ATTITUDES
CONTEXT
THEMES
“I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Club-footed - Having a deformed foot that twists inward.
Ghoul - A gruesome ghost.
Console - To console someone means to comfort them.
Dandle - To move a baby up and down happily.
Rack - A torture device, where a person is laid out on a platform and stretched.
Treason - A crime against the king or queen.
Engender - To create or encourage something to happen.
Bureaucrat - Someone who works in an office for a large company.
Hector - To bully someone / speak at them in a superior and upsetting manner.
Folly - Foolishness
Dragoon - To ‘dragoon’ someone means to force them into doing something.
Automaton - A robot that looks like a human.
Dissipate - Dissolve / disappear
Thistledown - The fluffy seeds of the thistle plant that get blown in the wind.
Hither and thither - An old fashioned way of saying ‘here and there’.
, STORY/SUMMARY
On the surface, this is a pretty sad poem! It’s full of dark imagery of the suffering an
unborn child may have to endure in its life. However, we can also interpret it as having
a positive, motivational force behind it - by exposing the difficulties and problems with
our world, we can work together to build a brighter future for the children of tomorrow.
Firstly, the speaker asks that God protects them from dangerous animals and ‘ghouls’
(ghosts). Then, he asks for comfort because he’s worried that the human race might
‘wall’ him (impose boundaries or rules on him), medicate or dull his senses with drugs,
trick him with lies or torture him. Stanza 3 is more positive in tone, asking for exposure
to nature - trees, birds, sky, grass and water. He asks for forgiveness of sins, especially
those he commits because of other people’s actions.
In Stanza 5, he asks to be rehearsed in playing ‘parts’, being able to act well to suit
different situations he might face in life - old men giving advice, office workers bullying
him, his own children cursing him, as well as his response to nature. Then (Stanza 6),
he asks for protection against men who act as animals or think they are God. In Stanza
7 he asks for strength to fight those who try to oppress him, turning him into a
mindless robot or a cog in a machine, those who want to get rid of his individuality and
make him like everybody else. Finally, in the 8th and final stanza he offers a summary
of all the ideas in the poem: he doesn’t want to become ‘stone’ (hard and closed off,
unemotional and inert), and he doesn’t want to be spilled (his energy and potential to
be spoiled). The final line ‘Otherwise kill me’ suggests that to him, either of those
outcomes would be as bad as death itself.
SPEAKER/VOICE
The speaker of the poem represents the voice of the unborn baby, who is speaking to
his or her God. The speaker has a strong spiritual belief in a higher power, hence the
word ‘Prayer’ in the title - this demonstrates that in times of difficulty or hardship, a
focus on spirituality can provide people with faith and hope for a better future. There
is also a prophetic tone to the poem, it reads a little like a sermon or a prophecy -
again demonstrating that it is religious in nature. There are also many different
rhetorical devices used throughout, which create the feeling of a powerful public
speech.
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