Question

A tiny cry within the night.

by Lynn Johnston

A tiny cry within the night,
A mother’s touch, a gentle light,
a rocking chair, a cheek laeased,
A baby TV a bosin pressed,
A bundle lizn lot replaced,
Mother’s footstes soft, retraced,
She whispas as the shadows lreep…
“Now let me sleep! Please, let me sleep!!!”

Question: the radical shift in tone changes the whole meaning of the poem. without the last line, what would it mean?

Answer 1

Lynn Johnston’s poem titled “ a tiny cry within the night” presents the paradox of everyday life where maternal care and love for the child are a part of domestic labour. However, in the social imagination, the tasks of maternal care are extolled as the ideal of love and responsibility. But the entire drudgery of work, the constant disturbance in the sleep cycle at night due to the onset of the baby’s cries is never seen as what it really is for the primary caregiver; a ceaseless and tiresome work. While the initial lines of the poem set the plot for the common and the stereotypical image of a family environement at night where everything has come to a state of rest and peace, the last line is presented as a climactic moment which brings the stark reality of the night and the moans of a terriefied baby are matched by the moans of the mother pleading the powerless baby to grant her some peace. Without the last line, th epoem would represent just another ordinary domestic scene and it would continue with the romanticisation of the mother-child encounter in the baby room at night. But it is with the inclusion of the last line, that the poet is able to accentuate the ordinaryniness of the parental care with the stark reality of labour which is otherwise made invisible in the social imagaination.