Poetry for Students

Volume 19 15

Poem Summary

Stanza 1

In the first stanza of “The Boy,” the narrator

questions who it is looking out the window. “The

boy in me” suggests another identity, or way of see-

ing, of which the narrator is becoming aware. The

gender of the narrator is not clear at this point. What

is clear is the assumption that one’s gender influ-

ences the way that one sees the world, the things

to which one pays attention.

Stanza 2

In this stanza, the narrator continues question-

ing the gender of the boy inside her, wondering if

he would have responded differently to his taunters

“if he were a girl.” The last line alerts readers to

the fact that the narrator is in the process of com-

posing a piece of writing, possibly a school exer-

cise on a fairy tale or book about World War II.

Stanza 3

The poem becomes more transparently self-

reflexive in this stanza. That is, the boy mentioned

in the opening stanza is now the one crossing out

words in the second. The “homework” he is doing

includes writing the words, “the rain, the linen-

mender,” which refer to the images in the first

stanza. The last sentence runs over into the next

stanza and explicitly states what the previous

stanzas have illustrated: the boy’s dawning aware-

ness of what it means to be a boy. “The absence

... of gender” refers to the way that the young boy
is not aware of himself as a boy, and “the privilege
of gender” refers to the ways in which boys, as
opposed to girls, often do not have to think of them-
selves asboys but are nonetheless socially re-
warded for simply being male.

Stanza 4

The speaker continues attempting to describe

the character of the boy inside her, who resembles

someone on the edge of puberty. That he is “un-

marked” does not mean that he is “neutered,” or

without sexuality, but rather that he feels himself

in the moment sexually undefined, ungendered. He

experiences a moment of self-awareness when the

boys in the park taunt him, calling him “Jew!”

Stanza 5

In this stanza, the speaker describes the book

the boy in her (who is making observations and

writing a story) read about World War II. “Parti-

sans” refer to the organized resistance to Nazi oc-

cupation. The speaker makes the point that the story

of the war contains a warning, but the nature of the

warning is unclear. It is a “code” to the young boy,

who is just learning what it means to be a boy and

a Jew.

Stanza 6

This stanza describes the boy’s appearance.

“They” refers to the Nazis, and the “thing” they

know is that the boy is Jewish.

Stanza 7

In asking if the partisans have sons or grand-

parents in “his story,” the speaker is speculating

about the story the boy (who is an alter ego of the

speaker) is writing. The speaker wonders which

identity, Jewish or male, is stronger.

Stanza 8

This stanza returns to the image of the boy

looking out the window in the first stanza. The per-

son “who’ll never be a man” is the speaker speak-

ingas the poet(i.e., Marilyn Hacker), referring to

herself as a boy and in the third person. The boy’s

The Boy

Media

Adaptations

• Caedmon released an audiocassette titled Poetry
  & Voice of Marilyn Hacker(1984) with Hacker
  reading a selection of her poems.

67082 _PFS_V19boyxx 013 - 027 .qxd 9/16/2003 9:24 M Page 15