Analysis Of D. H. Lawrence's Piano: The Child And Happiest Stage Of Life

It has been commonly noted that people often consider their childhood as a nostalgic period. One’s childhood is one of the three stages of life and could be considered their most innocent and happiest stage. As people transition to adulthood, they are too occupied with work, family, and other life stresses. When experiencing these challenges, people begin to reminisce about their childhood time period when they weren’t dealt with all the responsibilities of adulthood. The poem “Piano” written by D. H. Lawrence illustrates a fully grown adult male experiencing nostalgia as a woman’s soft singing voice causes the speaker to have flashbacks of his childhood. As he listens to the music, it reminds him of his happiest memories and releases him from …show more content…
The speaker refuses to live in the past nor does he want to give into his emotional needs and mourns for his lost innocence. “In spite of myself” (5) prove the struggle that the speaker goes through with his own opposing desires. In other words, he feels the need to stay in his adulthood, but the desire to experience the joys of childhood is too strong. In comparison to his dull, innocent, and free of worries childhood years, the speaker’s adulthood life is without family support and filled with obstacles and stress. As speaker longs for his childhood life, he comes to the realization that he has reached his adulthood, a phase in life with freedom and power. Yet he still contemplates on giving it all up. This is important because as the “glamour of childish days” (11) is upon him, he breaks down crying for his childhood memories. His “manhood is cast down a flood of remembrance” because he believes in the notion that men are not supposed to show emotions and cry. When he breaks down and weeps it demonstrates that his childhood memories are so powerful that losing it that is a loss in the …show more content…
For the speaker, the piano symbolizes nostalgia of his childhood memories. Even though the speaker is able to experience his childhood through his unconsciousness for a few hours, he made the most of them. It is expressed through the piano that every moment of the childhood days should be cherished because once it ends, it is lost forever. The piano is also compared to a guide in his childhood and continues to show him the way to through his adulthood. Therefore, in the end of the poem, the speaker breaks down and “weep like a child for the past” (12) as he wishes he is able to preserve these memories