Amanda Poem Class 10th Main Points

 

Main Points of the Poem

1.         The little girl Amanda is biting her nails and her mother stops her from doing so.

2.         Then she tells Amanda not to slouch(झुकाना) her shoulders and tells her to sit up straight.Her mother also asks her to lift up her shoulders and adopt the right posture.

3.  Amanda is lost in a world of dreams and fantasy(कल्पना लोक, imagined).

4.  She imagines herself as a mermaid who lives in a peaceful emerald(हरा,green) sea all alone and moves around freely and blissfully.

5.  Amanda’s mother asks if she has finished her homework, tidied her room and reminds her that she had told her to clean her shoes and that she hasn’t done so.

6.  But Amanda has again drifted to the world of dreams and fantasy.

7.  She imagines that she is an orphan who roams around the streets freely and walks on the soft dust with her bare feet drawing designs on it.

8.  She loves silence, and freedom to live her life as per her wishes.

9. In the real world Amanda’s mother stops her from eating chocolate.

10. And reminds her that eating chocolate might cause her acne problem.

11. Then her mother tells Amanda that she must not look the other way when her mother is speaking to her.

12. Amanda withdraws into her fantasy world for the last time so that she can escape from her mother’s nagging.

13. She imagines herself to be Rapunzel. Rapunzel is a German fairy tale

14. She imagines that she is perfectly happy to live alone in the tower, for she has nothing to worry about. Life over there is peaceful, and solitary.

15. In fact, she is so happy with her life that she will never let down her hair in an attempt to escape from the tower or to allow anyone inside.

16. In the last stanza, Amanda’s mother tells her to stop sulking.

17. She also accuses her daughter of having mood swings very frequently.

18. Finally, she tells Amanda that anyone who saw her would think that her mother has been nagging her.

19. It is obvious that Amanda’s mother feels it is her duty to correct her daughter and to teach her the proper way to behave.

20. She does not realize that this can be an exhausting or irritating experience for Amanda.

Amanda

 

Setting of the poem: 4 different settings

The 1st setting is that of the real world, in which Amanda’s mother is forever trying to alter her posture or her behaviour. On the other hand, the other 3 settings are fanciful ones constructed by Amanda in her own mind. These are the realms(दुनिया) to which she escapes when she is tired of listening to her mother finding faults in her.

1. One of these settings is that of the sea, in which Amanda imagines herself to be a mermaid.

2. Another one of these settings is that of the street, in which Amanda imagines herself to be an orphan child.

3. The last of these settings is that of a tower, in which Amanda imagines herself to be the imprisoned princess known as Rapunzel.

These 3 settings form a contrast to the real world in which Amanda and her mother live.

Style

The poem contains 7 stanzas. The 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th stanzas are made up of 4 lines each, and are spoken by an authoritative person in Amanda’s life, perhaps her mother.

      The 2nd, 4th and 6th stanzas are written within brackets, are made up of 3 lines each, and are spoken by Amanda herself. Hence, the entire poem consists of 25 lines in total.

      Each of the stanza spoken by her mother follows the rhyme scheme: aa ba. The last word of the first, second and fourth lines are the same. On the other hand, the stanzas spoken by Amanda consist of the three rhyming lines each.

      Metaphor has been used effectively as a poetic device in 2nd, 4th and 6th stanzas. Amanda imagines herself first as a mermaid, then as an orphan and finally becomes Rapunzel.