Rodriguez 1

Nicole Rodriguez
Mr. Munoz
AP English, Per. 4
22 September 2014
Fern Hill Thematic Analysis
In his poem, Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas uses literary devices to express his emotions to his
readers. The speaker talks about his childhood and all the youth and happiness he had, as if he
thought he could stay young forever. Throughout the poem the speaker starts to grow up and
talks about him losing his sense of innocence and his come to the realization that he cannot stay
young forever. One literary element he uses quite often throughout the poem is theme. Although
there are many themes throughout the poem, one of the biggest is the theme of growing up.
Thomas uses mainly diction, imagery and metaphor to describe his journey of maturing from
being a child to becoming an adult.
In the very first line of the first stanza the speaker makes it known that he is a happy
youth as he says Now I was young and easy under the apple boughs / About the lilting house
and happy as the grass was green (1-2). Here the reader is already aware of the speakers clear
youthfulness and happiness, confirming his happiness by confirming the grass to be green.
Further down in the first stanza, his youth is made known again, this time through youthful antics
of fairytale using imagination. He writes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the
apple towns / And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves / Trail with daisies and
barley / Down the rivers of the windfall light (6-9). Here the reader uses metaphor to compare
himself to a prince who rules over the apple town. At this point in the speakers life, he is clearly
enjoying his youthfulness and using his imagination to do so.

Rodriguez 2
His youthfulness continues into the second stanza as the first line again makes it known
that the speaker is green and carefree (10). Thomas uses metaphor here to compare the speaker
to being green. Thomas does not use the word green to say the speaker is literally green, but to
have the color green represent youth and innocence. The color green is often referred to as being
the color that symbolizes freshness. Therefore, green is the perfect color to symbolize the
youth of a child. A few lines down, the speaker talks about how time allowed him to play and
put himself back into an imaginary place where he was a huntsman. Time let me play and be /
Golden in the mercy of his means / And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman (1315). Thomas uses repetition with the word green to emphasize the color and make it known to
his readers that green is symbolic throughout the poem. Its symbolic as he is trying to say that
he himself still feels fresh; that he is still young and carefree.

In the third stanza, the speaker is still enjoying his youth, at first at least. Thomas uses
happy diction to show that its still a joyous time in the speakers life. The word lovely is
repeated twice as well as the word green again. Towards the end of the stanza, however,
Thomas slowly makes a transition between innocence and experience. In the final lines of the
third stanza, the speaker goes to sleep. In the last line the speaker falls asleep, flashing into the
dark (27). This is symbolic because it shows the speaker moving away from the innocence he
once knew and falling back into reality, which he refers to as dark, where he is forced to grow
up.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker awakes to a different farm than he once knew. In the
previous stanza the flashing into the dark symbolized him losing his innocence (27). In this
stanza, his awakening symbolizes him growing up and out of his youthful innocence. Thomas

Rodriguez 3
makes a biblical reference in this stanza to Adam and Eve, or actually Adam and maiden. He
alludes to them by talking about their innocence which they lost after eating from the Tree of
Knowledge, so did the speaker lose his youthful innocence when he woke up, or grew up. In this
stanza there is also a shift in tone from the previous stanzas. The speaker no longer sounds happy
or energetic. He no longer talks about playing or being green.

In the final two stanzas, the speaker is finally becoming aware of his fleeting
youthfulness and innocence. For example, he reflects on how he was carefree as a child in the
line And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows (42). In the final stanza, the
speaker is reflecting on the days he was under control of his naivety. He felt like he could be
forever young, when in reality, time would not allow this. He reflects how he used to be young
and easy when time allowed him to be, but now he has become aware that growing up is
inevitable (52). The speaker speaks with more complex diction to give the poem a well-educated
and experienced tone. The speaker ends the poem with the lines Time held me green and dying
/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea (53-54). Chains in the last line symbolize the
speakers naivety that held him back, causing him to believe that he has always been free, but in
reality was not, and now he has grown up.

Throughout the poem Thomas uses many literary devices to describe the dramatic
awakening the speaker had from childhood into reality, adulthood. Through complex diction,
metaphor, descriptive imagery, repetition, allusion, and allegory, Thomas gets the theme of
growing up across to his readers.