Child Margaret
Child Margaret - meaning Summary
Counting as Imaginative Play
The poem shows a young girl, Margaret, inventively writing numbers on a Saturday morning and treating each numeral as a living, lovable toy. Sandburg anthropomorphizes digits—some sturdy, some awkward—and describes Margaret’s affectionate responses, especially to the imperfect 3 and 8. The scene converts counting into imaginative play, framing mathematical symbols as rag dolls and emphasizing childlike wonder, tenderness, and the human impulse to personify abstract things.
Read Complete AnalysesTHE CHILD Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers. All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child's room. Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulder-straps. The 6 and 9 salute as dancing sisters, elder and younger, and 2 is a trapeze actor swinging to handclaps. All the numbers are well-born, only 3 has a hump on its back and 8 is knock-kneed. The child Margaret kisses all once and gives two kisses to 3 and 8. (Each number is a bran-new rag doll ... O in the wishing fingers ... millions of rag dolls, millions and millions of new rag dolls!!)
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