The Idiot Boy


"The Idiot Boy" is a poem written by William Wordsworth, a representative of the Romantic movement in English literature. The poem was composed in spring 1798 and first published in the same year in Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems written by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which is considered to be a turning point in the history of English literature and the Romantic movement. The poem investigates such themes as language, intellectual disability, maternity, emotionality, organisation of experience and "transgression of the natural."
"The Idiot Boy" is Wordsworth's longest poem in Lyrical Ballads, although it is surpassed in length by Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." It was the 16th poem of the collection in the original 1798 edition, and the 21st poem in the 1800 edition, which added Wordsworth's famous Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

Summary of the plot

The poem tells the story of the titular "Idiot Boy," as well as his mother Betty Foy and their gravely ill neighbour Susan Gale. As Johnny's father, a woodsman, is away from home, Betty decides to send her son to the nearest town on horseback, so that he may bring with him a doctor who could help Susan. However, Johnny gets lost trying to reach the town at night, and his mother is forced to follow him. When she reaches the doctor's house, she realizes Johnny is not there and returns home in a state of agitation, anxiety, and fear, forgetting to bring the doctor with her. Eventually, Johnny is reunited with his mother, and their neighbour rises from her bed, miraculously cured.

Form

The poem uses a five-line stanza of tetrameter lines, with a rhyming scheme of ABCCB, said to be a "variation on the long meter quatrain." It has been described as a realisation of the traditional form of the ballad, chiefly because of its "unobtrusive" narrator, as well as "an extreme example of the naive or rustic style in poetry."

Balladic Elements

The poem contains allusions to many romantic ballad commonplaces, connected mainly with Gottfried August Bürger's ballads "Lenore" and "The Wild Huntsman." This is exemplified mainly by the mock-heroic section of the poem, as well as its opening stanza, where moonlight and the presence of owls take centre stage as the attributes of the ballad:

'T'is eight o'clock – a clear March night,
'The moon is up – the sky is blue,
'The owlet in the moonlight air,
He shouts from nobody knows where
He lengthens out his lonely shout,
Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!
Johnny has been dubbed "a Quixotic hero," as well as a knight errant, and an allusion to Don Quixote has been found in the narrator's vision of Johnny hunting sheep in line 337 of the poem. He has been connected to "a long tradition of fools," as the poem explores his extraordinary, unorthodox perception of the world. The poem, however, seems to emphasise a defamiliarization of such clichés, rather than emulate them. The poem's connection to the ballad genre has also been described as tenuous, as it is said to exhibit a shift in focus from the exploration of a plot to the exploration of abstract feeling.

The Narrator

The narrator of "The Idiot Boy" is considered to be "comic," as well as "dramatized," "highly limited" and even "incompetent." He is described as a poetic figure "variously affected" by the story he narrates, and thus both "detached" from and "engaged" in the events of the poem. Though he is not directly involved in the story of the poem himself, certain qualities of his "may be inferred from stylistic habits," as well as the parts of the poem in which he addresses his audience.
The narrator's attitude towards Johnny seems benevolent, however he criticises Betty with "a trace of patronizing condescension" in lines 22-26:

The world will say 'tis very idle,
Bethink you of the time of night;
There's not a mother, no not one.
But when she hears what you have done.
Oh! Betty she'll be in a fright.
Condescension may also be found in the narrator's description of Johnny as a "fierce and dreadful hunter," as well as in his negative response to Betty's imaginings about her son's fate.

So, through the moonlight lane she goes,
And far into the moonlight dale;
And how she ran, and how she walked,
And all that to herself she talked,
would surely be a tedious tale.
However, he is said to be just as much a source of speculation as she is, as he strives to "fill in the gaps of his story" with "fanciful adventure."
Out of ninety stanzas of the poem, approximately one third of them begin with the conjunctions "and," "but" or "so," which suggests that its narrator is focused chiefly on a simple, sequential retelling of the story. He also seems prone to simplifying the character's experience into simple binary opposites, such as when referring to the life or death of Susan Gale, in Betty's instructions to Johnny or in the description of her search for him.

In high and low, above, below,
ln great and small, in round and square,
In tree and tower was Johnny seen,
In bush and brake, in black and green,
'Twas Johnny, Johnny everywhere.
Despite this, some evidence of the narrator's skilfulness has been identified in his usage of humour and deliberate poetic structures, such as the recurring theme of the owls.

The Muses

The mock-heroic fragment of the poem may be read as a "self-conscious comment on the narrator's efforts," as he expresses affection towards his muses in a way similar to how Betty's affection towards Johnny is portrayed with "Him whom she loves, her idiot boy". The narrator's appeal to the muses has also been described as a way to comment on the anxiousness which readers may experience expecting a full account of the titular character's "strange adventures", as they would in more traditional sentimental stories.
In lines 347-348 the narrator claims that he has practised poetry for fourteen years, which is a fact true about Wordsworth in the moment of writing the poem. These lines have been read to suggest the narrator's incompetence, as trades would typically be learnt in a period of seven years. However, the narrator has also been dubbed a "deliberately naïve version of ," not to be confused with the author himself, but rather to be identified with a "narrow-minded" and "excessively genteel" style of poetry criticised by Wordsworth.

Humour

"The Idiot Boy's" tone is considered to be comedic. Its humour has been dubbed a "defence against the ominous threats facing Johnny," as well as a "burlesque" of the philosophical discourse of intellectual disability in the Enlightenment, as by "mocking the reader's sense of decorum" the poem seems to challenge literary and social preconceptions.
The sources of humour in the poem have been found in the contrast between the fragments devoted to Johnny and Betty and the elements of the narrator's mock-heroic voice, as well as the comedic force of Betty's failure to ask for the doctor's help joint with Susan's miraculous recovery. Thus, the poem's humour has been classified as "one of happy resolution."

Characters and Themes

Moonlight and the Supernatural

Supernatural elements of the poem are found chiefly in Betty's visions of Johnny's undoing and in the narrator's mock-heroic section :

'Oh saints! what is become of him?
Perhaps he's climbed into an oak,
Where he will stay until he is dead;
Or, sadly he has been misled,
And joined the wandering gipsy-folk.
'Or him that wicked pony's carried
To the dark cave, the goblin's hall;
Or in the castle he's pursuing,
Among the ghosts his own undoing;
Or playing with the waterfall.'
Betty imagines her son's downfall to be caused by goblins or ghosts, but the narrator disregards her concerns, describing them as "unworthy" and "wild":
Betty's superstitious speculation has been described as her way of dealing with her anxiety for Johnny – namely the fear of him dying. Her anxious behaviour is also found to contrast with the aura of peaceful "transcendence" evoked by the moonlight. The moon, in turn, is identified with Johnny's "other-worldliness," as he experiences the uncanniness of the night.
Despite its abundance of supernatural elements, the poem has been found to be focused rather on "social commentary" in line with Wordsworth's aim "to give the charm of novelty to things of every day".

Johnny Foy and Intellectual Disability

Johnny Foy exhibits non-normative behaviour and atypical verbal expression, which has led critics to interpret his condition as intellectual disability. "The Idiot Boy" is said to explore how such disabilities are mythologized in order to establish them as a proper subject for linguistic and psychologic deliberations, and it has been connected with "an emergent 'humane' understanding of cognitive difference."
The poem's usage of the term "idiot" has been said to carry "connotations of deficiency," and the word itself has been counted amongst those used "to provoke revulsion or to ostracize groups of people."
Johnny's condition is said to transgress "the limits of being," as well as the "binary oppositions of order and disorder, reason and idiocy, purity and disgust." He has also been connected with the poem's subversion of romantic conventions, as he himself is free of any literary and socio-cultural preconceptions.
Although Johnny's and his mother's roles in the poem are discussed at length, his father is notably absent from the poem and only mentioned by his profession in lines 37-39.

Johnny's Joy and Poeticism

Michael Mason claims that Johnny experiences "Wordsworthian joy," a state in which a passive observer perceives natural phenomena "in themselves," with no outside point of reference, as illustrated by Johnny's misclassification of owl cries and the moon in lines 447-463:

For, while they all were travelling home,
Cried Betty 'Tell us, Johnny, do,
Where all this long night you have been,
What you have heard, what you have seen,
And, Johnny, mind you tell us true.'
Now Johnny all night long had heard
The owls in tuneful concert strive;
No doubt too he the moon had seen;
For in the moonlight he had been
From eight o'clock till five.
And thus, to Betty's question, he
Made answer, like a traveller bold
,
'The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo,
And the sun did shine so cold,' –
Thus answered Johnny in his glory,
And that was all his travel's story.
This sense of joy has also been connected with an escape from the restrained world of rationality into one where language is "subordinate to feeling." Johnny's account of his journey has been said to present him as an "imaginative" and "poetic" figure, as he seems to creatively organise his new experience. However, although this is identified with "poetic insight," Johnny all the same fails to reach the doctor and let him help his neighbour.
This portrayal seems to criticise the popular perception of intellectually disabled people in the Enlightenment, as it would likely lead to Johnny being read as "revolting" or "inhuman" due to his disability, in line with Coleridge's remark that Wordsworth has not "taken sufficient care to preclude from the reader's fancy the disgusting images of ordinary, morbid idiocy."
Furthermore, Johnny's apparent lack of reason, contrasted with the suggestion that his horse is both capable of thought and that he "thinks of as 'what' rather than 'whom'" in lines 121-126, has been connected with John Locke's classification of "changelings" – a species between humans and animals.

But then he is a horse that thinks!
And when he thinks his pace is slack,
Now, though he knows poor Johnny well,
Yet for his life he cannot tell
What he has got upon his back.
Despite his failure, Johnny's experience is said to be "cathartic for entire community," transforming it "into a more integral and caring" one, as he, his mother and their neighbour are once more brought together.