Robert Frost "In Neglect" an Essay

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It is clear that the boy believes the teachers had expected more of them and have now demonstrated that they were "mistaken." The addressee actually reminds me of myself, of my relation to the mischievous boy in my school. But I was never sent to the corner or punished with the boy in my school, and the addressee in this poem is most likely the other boy who has been punished and with the speaker been sent to "the wayside nook." After all the speaker refers to "us," so it must be that the addressee is his partner in crime, so to speak.

The tone of the speaker ranges from honest assessment to ironic and humorous revelation. The tone of honesty is heard in the first half of the poem, as the speaker considers not his own actions but those of the teacher (and places the greater fault on the authority, who he feels has "left" them). The tone becomes ironic in the end as the speaker hints at the fact that he knows the gravity of their situation is not as bad as the teacher would prefer them to think: in fact, he plays at acting certain ways, as "mischievous" or as a "vagrant" or as an innocent, before finally attempting to "try" to act as the teacher would prefer him to act -- which is, humorously, "forsaken.

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" However, the entire tone of the poem may be ironic if one considers that the speaker is merely attempting to shift the blame for his misbehavior from himself to the teacher who "leaves" him and the other boy to their waywardness by exiling them to the corner. Even if this is the case, however, one thing is certain: the poem's tone is accepting (in the sense that the speaker accepts his situation) rather than remorseful (in the sense that the speaker regrets what he has done)......

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