(a) How can 'this map' become 'their window'?

Question

Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow : 

" Unless, governor, inspector, visitor 

This map becomes their window and these windows 

That shut upon their lives like catacombs, 

Break O break open till they break the town 

And show the children to green fields, and make their world 

Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues 

Run naked into books the white and green leaves upon 

History their whose language is the sun. "

(a) How can 'this map' become 'their window'?

(b) What have shut upon their lives like catacomb ?

(c) Explain : '... till they break the town'.

(d) What will happen if the children come out of the bonds that bind them?

(e) “So blot their maps with slums as big as doom”, says Stephen Spender. What does the poet want to convey?

Answer 1

(a) This map of the world is shaped and owned by the rich. It must also be thrown open to the poor and unfortunate children of slums. Only then will it become 'their window'. They will be able to peep inside it.

(b) Their dirty surroundings have blocked their progress and growth. They have been shut inside them like the underground graves

(c) Till they come out of the dirty surroundings and slums of the town into the open.

(d) Then their world will be extended to the golden sands and azure waves and to the green fields.

(e)  The poet wants to convey that the future of these children is bleak. It is blotted by fog and spells doom for them. He hopes that one day these maps would become their windows.