A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky Analysis

The meaningful poem “A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky” written by Lewis Carroll is a poem describing summer days spent with children. The Author, Lewis Carroll had a stutter his whole life which made it difficult for him to talk to other adults, but he found it easy to speak with children. Due to the impairment, Carroll spent generous amounts of time with young children (“Lewis Carroll”). Through Carroll’s work one can see various instances of fairytale language and other dialect and expressions geared toward children. In the poem “A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky”, Through Carroll’s writing he reveals that he deeply cherishes the time he spent with the children. The most pronounced tool used in his writing is diction, which is followed by imagery. The

Differing from other authors who typically use an allusion to connect to someone else’s work, Carroll uses an allusion to connect to another one of his writings. Throughout the poem at various points the name of a young girl, Alice is mentioned, and in the first line of the sixth stanza Carroll wrote “In a wonderland they lie.”(16) Both the name Alice and the reference to wonderland tie into the fairytale written by Carroll, “Alice in Wonderland”. As mentioned earlier Carroll spent many hours with children telling and writing stories for them, Alice Liddell he specifically spent and ample amount of time with. One day he verbally told her the story of Alice in Wonderland and she was so excited by the story she had begged him to write it down for her. Carroll originally wrote the story for the little girl Alice Liddell, but eventually it was published in 1865 and had it’s rise to popularity (“Lewis Carroll”). Going back to the poem, once it is known that the allusion of Alice mentioned in the poem is the same child that Alice in Wonderland was written for, the theme is even more pronounced, showing how much Carroll values the relationship he has with the