William Wordsworth We are Seven/Interpretation

Interpretation

The poem is an interesting conversation between a man and a young girl. It is especially intriguing because the conversation could have been less than five lines, and yet it is 69 lines long. The reason for this is that the man cannot accept that the young girl still feels she is one of seven siblings even though two of her siblings have died. The speaker begins the poem with the question of what a child should know of death. At the beginning it appears that the little girl understands very little. She seems to be in denial about the deaths of her siblings, especially because she continues to spend time with them and sing to them. The line between life and death in eyes of the girl disappears. Her siblings are still present in her life. By the end of the poem, however, the reader is left with the feeling that perhaps the little girl understands more about life and death than the man to whom she is speaking. She refuses to become incapacitated by grief, or to cast the deceased out of her life. Instead she accepts that things change, and continues living as happily as she can.