Reading Response Journal: We Are Seven

The Wordsworth poem “We Are Seven” is insightful, intriguing, and simply awe striking. At first, the poem seemed to me to be a bit repetitive, without really getting anywhere. In other words, the man and the girl seem to be arguing over the same thing with neither understanding the other or changing their opinion. After my second reading, I realized a few more clues. The little girl is the last child left in her home with her mother. As she says two are at sea, two in Conway, and two dead. And yet, she does not really describe them as dead. She uses more of a euphemism and says that they lay in the church yard. I also realized that she goes out and plays with them, and sings to them, treating them as if they were still with her. I think the main message I drew from this story is that there is a gap in comprehension between the fully-developed man and the young girl. He cannot get past the logic of the siblings being dead and departed, while she feels their presence daily. He feels that he should recognize their absence and move on from them, while she  lives life full of love and joy knowing that they are with her. So it is hard to side with the logically sound man when no man truly knows what happens to us after death. Perhaps we have a lot to learn from the children.