Prayer Before Birth
Questions and Answers
The Question and
Answer section for Prayer Before Birth is a great resource to ask questions,
find answers, and discuss the novel.
PRAYER BEFORE BIRTH
BY LOUIS MACNEICE
SHORT QUESTIONS
1. “I am not
yet born; O hear me.”—What does the poet wants to say?
Here in the poem “Prayer
Before Birth” by Louis MacNeice, the unborn child requests the God to keep
bloodsucking bat or rat or other harmful animal or spirit away from the child
when he will be born.
2. “I am not
yet born, console me.”—Why does the unborn child demand consolation before
birth from God?
The unborn child fears that
society or human may divide him in the name of race, religion with walls or the
men may force him to tell lie or men may force him to play with blood. And all
these will give him pain. So he demands consolation from the God.
3. “I am not
yet born; provide me”—What does the unborn child want to be provided?
The unborn child wants from
the God water to bathe, grass to play on them, trees to talk, bird to chirp for
poet and divine light to guide and remove darkness from his mind.
4. “…….. a
white light/ in the back of my mind to guide me”—Explain the line.
The unborn child seeks
white light I.e. light of knowledge that will perish his mind’s darkness i.e.
superstition, ego, malice, division of creed etc. and that will guide him from
wrong way to right way in life.
5. “I am not
yet born; forgive me”—Why does the unborn child want forgiveness?
The unborn child knows very
well that when he will be born, he will have to commit sins and then his words,
thoughts will be crooked. Society probably will force him to commit suicide.
So, in advance, the unborn child seeks forgiveness from the God.
6. “……. My
words / when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me”—Explain.
The unborn child is sure
that the society will speak to him roughly or will think of him badly. He
doubts that at that time he will not able to control his own words, thoughts
against them.
7. “I am not
yet born; rehearse me”—Why does the unborn child ask the God to rehearse him?
The unborn child knows very
well that when he will be born, he will have to endure the old men’s lecture,
officer’s temper, beloved’s laughter, children’s curse and even the beggar’s
refusal. So before birth, the child wants from the God to rehearse to face
them.
8. “I am not
yet born; O fill me”—What does the unborn child demand from the God?
The poet demands from the
God enough strength so that he can face the evil force that will take away his
humanity and force him to join battle field with lethal arms. With that
strength, he also wants to go against them who will try to abolish his entity.
9. “……..would
dragoon me into lethal automaton/ would make me a cog in a machine …..”—Explain
the line.
The unborn child knows that
when he will be born, the war-monger will surely force him to be a part of
deadly war with lethal arms whether he wants it or not. So, he seeks enough
strength to go against them.
10. What does
the unborn child ask for at the very end of the poem?
/ “Let them not
make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill
me.”-Explain.
At the very end of the poem
“Prayer Before Birth”, the unborn child wants that he should be given proper
scope to live as a human being in peace and if the God cannot keep the child’s
request, the unborn child wants himself to be killed before his birth.
11. “Let not
the man who is beast or who thinks he is God/ Come near me”—Explain.
The unborn child requests
the God to keep away two types of men from him when he will be born—first type
is those men who are like beast, who are tyrant and second type is those who
are so arrogant that they think themselves God.
FULL MARKS-10
1.“I am not yet
born; O fill me/ With strength against those who would freeze my/ humanity, ………
like water held in the/ hands would spill me.”—Explain.
OR
“I am not yet
born; O fill me
With strength
against those who would freeze my
Humanity……….hither
and thither
like water held
in the
hands would
spill me.”—Explain.
Answer: These lines have been
taken from MacNeice’s poem, ‘Prayer Before Birth’. In this poem, an unborn
child prays to God before his birth. He knows that the world is full of malice,
contrast, controversy, hatred, war. He knows that it will not be easy to live
on this earth. So, he wants enough power from God so that he can stand against
them especially against that evil power that will force him to join war to kill
humanity with lethal automaton indiscriminately. He also prays to God to have
enough strength so that he can oppose them who will consider the unborn child
not as a human being but as a machine and who will dissipate his entirety like
water held in hand. The poet is fearful about it before his birth. The poet
also expresses his hatred and protest against war. He knows war is not the
solution to any dispute. Rather, war nips life in bud.
2.“Let them not
make me a stone and let them not spill me/ Otherwise kill me”—Explain the
concluding stanza of the poem ‘Prayer Before Birth’.
OR
“Let them not
make me a stone and let them not spill me
Otherwise kill
me”
—Explain the
concluding stanza of the poem ‘Prayer Before Birth’.
Answer: These lines occurs in
the poem Prayer Before Birth by Macneice. This is the concluding pray of an
unborn child to the God. The unborn child knows very well that he will have to
face the perils, evils upon being born into the world. He knows that the world
will not spare him from committing evil like murder, using slang words,
treachery etc. He also knows that the world will make him a stone-hearted man
with no sympathy, humanity and ultimately, they will destroy his life
completely. He is very much fearful about it. So, the unborn child prays to God
for protection from this to happen with him. He wants to live. He hates war and
hates to become the casualty of war. At last the child tells the God to kill
him if God can not able to keep the child’s request. To the child, it is better
to die early before being killed in the war. Through this, the poet expresses
his anti-war mentality.
3.What are the
contextual clues that the poem was written during World War II?
Answer:-While the poem is not
explicitly about the Second World War, it does make subtle allusions to a
war-torn Europe that MacNeice and others witnessed on a near daily basis. One
of these allusions comes in the form of the "lethal automaton," a
euphemism for a soldier who is trained to kill and always under the command of
somebody else (30). The speaker also cautions against "the man who is
beast or thinks he is God," which is likely a reference to the fascist
leaders that had come to power across Europe, including Adolf Hitler in Germany
and Benito Mussolini in Italy (26).
4.Is it a fair
assessment to describe the tone of this poem, as many have done, as paranoid?
Answer:-The poem certainly
exhibits sentiments of paranoia, though to describe the poem as such would be to
invalidate the very real criticisms expressed by the speaker about the state of
the world. Rather than interpret the poem as the paranoid ramblings of a
radical, one must consider the context within which the poem was written: World
War II devastated the European landscape and ushered in new military
technologies that could obliterate the world as we know it, most notably in the
form of nuclear weaponry. Furthermore, the war also proved that fascist
dictators had gained power and influence enough to wage attacks across the
continent. Finally, the genocidal practices of the Nazi regime brought a new
form of horror to society, killing innocent people in cold blood. It is this
horror that the speaker wants to emphasize in the poem, expressing not paranoia
exclusively but instead a bleak outlook on whether the world could ever recover
from what they saw in the 1940s.
Prayer Before Birth Questions
and Answers
The Question and Answer
section for Prayer Before Birth is a great resource to ask questions, find
answers, and discuss the novel.
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