Dylan Thomas’ “The Hunchback in the Park” represents the relegation of the individual in a society that prefers the normal over the abnormal. The dialectical pair in accordance with hierarchy in such a stance would be normal/abnormal. The park represents a place of social communion. The hunchback appears to be isolated even in such a social setting: “a solitary mister”. He appears to be propped up between the ‘trees and water’; that is, he appears to be foregrounded in nature owing to his isolation. His reference of time is indicated by the bell at dark. His is a stagnant , sterile existence.

The hunchback in the park
A solitary mister
Propped between trees and water
From the opening of the garden lock
That lets the trees and water enter
Until the Sunday sombre bell at dark

Eating bread from a newspaper
Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship
Slept at night in a dog kennel
But nobody chained him up.

His preoccupation against nature attributes to him traits of an animal existence. He comes across as an animal as he eats from a newspaper and drinks water from his ‘chained’ cup. The idea of being ‘chained’ highlights the qualities of a limited existence. The first part of the poem appears to be narrated through the consciousness of a child. The boy says that he hunchback slept in the fountain basin where he sailed his ship. The basin functioned as a dog kennel, and the man slept in it.
‘Like the park birds he came early
Like the water he sat down
And Mister they called Hey mister
The truant boys from the town
Running when he had heard them clearly
On out of sound

He came early like the park birds, says the speaker. He is thus endowed with an animal existence that is kinetic. And yet when the speaker of the poem states that he sat down like ‘water’, this animal life is attributed with a vegetative existence. The term’ water’ also lends the person in question a kind of transparency. He is unknown to the ones around them; they do not address him by his first name but by an anonymous ‘mister’. The hunchback heard the malingerers though they were well out of hearing distance. This proves that his sensory perceptions were quite sharp to the mockeries hurled at him.

He runs to escape from the poking words of the truant boys. They laughed even while he shook the paper to withdraw into his shell from the routine affairs of the world that did not care for the hunchback. He was not only bent physically, but also by life’s oppressions. He was a specimen or spectacle to the so-called normal world. Therefore the place he was positioned in came across to the spectators as a zoo, as he was caged in the atrocities of life. Akin to an animal, he follows his instincts and runs for his life past the park-keeper with his stick that was his only support. The stick appears to be conspicuous in its support to the hunchback as compared to the human beings around.
Past lake and rockery
Laughing when he shook his paper
Hunchbacked in mockery
Through the loud zoo of the willow groves
Dodging the park keeper
With his stick that picked up leaves.

And the old dog sleeper
Alone between nurses and swans
While the boys among willows
Made the tigers jump out of their eyes
To roar on the rockery stones
And the groves were blue with sailors

The old dog sleeper was alone among nurses and swans. The first (the nurses)being an epitome of service and the second(the swans) an ideal of beauty. The hunchback could not contribute in both these aspects to society .The groves appeared to be blue instead of green as the sailors in uniform foregrounded the scene. The boys appeared to infuriate even the tigers, as their eyes jumped out of their sockets.

Made all day until bell time
A woman figure without fault
Straight as a young elm
Straight and tall from his crooked bones
That she might stand in the night
After the locks and chains

To escape from his humdrum existence, the hunchback conjures up an imaginary partner –a woman figure without fault. She is perfect to the extent of perfection. She is as straight as the elm as compared to the hunchback. “Straight and tall from his crooked bones” also points to the belief of Semitic religions that the Woman was created from the ribs of Man. The concept therefore comes across as an inversion of the woman as an imperfection as compared to the Man. The poet thus appears to invert the dialectical pair-Man/Woman, Normal/Abnormal to Woman/Man. She may with stand the ‘locks and chains’, as she is mentally stronger.

© Rukhaya MK 2010

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