Here’s a full analysis of the poem ‘Rising Five’ by Norman Nicholson, tailored towards GCSE/IGCSE students but also suitable for those studying at a higher level.
Includes:
VOCABULARY
STORY / SUMMARY
SPEAKER / VOICE
ATTITUDES
LANGUAGE FEATURES
STRUCTURE / FORM
CONTEXT
THEMES
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CIE IGCSE Poetry Anthology
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Rising Five
“I’m rising five” he said
“Not four” and the little coils of hair
Un-clicked themselves upon his head....”
Norman Nicholson
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Dissected — to ‘dissect’ means to cut something apart, usually for scientific analysis so that we can
observe how it works in a deeper way.
Tangential — a mathematical term, in maths a ‘tangent’ is something which travels in a straight line, so
here it is used to refer to the sun’s rays as they travel in straight lines through the sky to Earth. We can
also use the word ‘tangent’ in a more artistic/figurative sense, to mean something that goes off topic or
breaks from the normal stream of thought.
STORY / SUMMARY
A boy petulantly tells the speaker of the poem that he isn’t only four years
old, he’s in fact “rising five”. This amuses the speaker and also gets him
thinking about the eagerness of nature and new life to grow quickly and
mature. This is contrasted with the speaker’s own mature perspective: he
feels we should slow down and take time to enjoy the growth process a little
more. The speaker is standing in a field, and he notices the same eagerness
in the Springtime around him — “Not May / But rising June” — the whole of
nature seems impatient, as if it can’t wait for Summer. The poem ends with
a reflection on the sadness within this attitude — when we are young, we all
rush forwards too quickly without taking time to appreciate life, and it will be
over far too soon.
, SPEAKER / VOICE
The speaker observes the little boy’s confidence and stubbornness with
amusement, creating a humorous but also respectful tone — he is surprised
and impressed by the boy’s wish to be considered older, but also saddened
as he realises that we all grow up too fast and don’t appreciate youth or
beautiful moments in life until they pass. He suggests in the last lines that
if we hold this attitude to life and don’t slow down and appreciate it we are
“Not living / But rising dead”, we are just heading fast towards death instead
of properly experiencing life.
LANGUAGE FEATURES
• Plosive sounds — “the cells of spring / Bubbled and doubled; buds unbuttoned” - the poet uses
plosive ‘b’ and ‘d’ sounds in this image to demonstrate the growth of life in Spring, how cells
duplicate and create new life in nature, and flowers pop open.
• Visual imagery — WThe dust dissected the tangential light:W, Nicholson uses scientific imagery
at times with a scientific register / semantic field of biology (“dissected” “tangential” “cells”)
to emphasise the difference between appreciating the world with an artistic eye for beauty, or a
practical and analytical eye for scientific processes — however, we could also say that he views the
scientific perspective as beautiful in itself, as this image produces a beautiful picture in our minds of
the way that specks of dust catch the sun’s rays and become visible for a moment
• Symbolism — “We never see the flower, /But only the fruit in the flower;” — the use of natural
imagery symbolises the processes of life and work that humans undertake, if we are looking always
for “fruit” (a possible idiomatic reference to the phrase “fruits of our labour”), we are always
only measuring the practical outcome of our life and work, rather than appreciating the beauty
(symbolised by the “flower”). This symbolism is extended in the next clause: “never the fruit, / But
only the rot in the fruit.” — here Nicholson is making the point that humans are overly critical, and
cannot even fully enjoy the products of their life and work because even then they are looking ahead
to the moment where it will “rot”, break down and disintegrate.
• The child himself is also a symbol of the same new growth and new life that surrounds him in the
field where he and the speaker are standing.
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