Short Story Analysis: A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, Part 2

You can read Part 1 of this story’s analysis here and hear Dylan Thomas read the story.  

In Part 1 I mentioned that I thought it odd for Thomas to use “Prothero” as a Welsh name.  Lawanada Commented on that:

Lawanda’s Comment:

ust a little help with the surname Prothero. Prothero is indeed Welsh and the English form would be Roderickson.

Some notable Protheros: (copied from houseofnames.com)

Stephen Prothero – American professor in the Dept of Religion at Boston University and author of numerous books on religion in the US, including the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy.

Mark W. Prothero (1957-2014), American attorney in Washington State, best known for serving as defense co-counsel for the Green River Killer, serial killer Gary Ridgway

Dan Prothero, San Francisco-based independent record producer, recording engineer and record collector

Rolla W. Prothero, American politician, Mayor of Baraboo, Wisconsin 1951-54.

John A. Prothero, American Republican politician, Presidential Elector for South Dakota, 1892.

Gareth John Prothero (b. 1941), Welsh international rugby union player.

Rowland Edmund Prothero (1851-1937), British administrator, author & politician, created 1st Baron Ernle in 1919.

Sir George Walter Prothero (1848-1922), English writer and historian, a former President of the Royal Historical Society.

My Reply:

Wow, Lawanda, I am very surprised. I guess I have never seen Welsh written, but the names listed on that Wikipedia link on Welsh surnames all sound very Anglo-Saxon. If Welsh was derived from Gaelic, then perhaps I can see Prothero being Welsh. Perhaps Thomas intends it to be searching for a pre-British Welsh name. Thank you for clarifying.

Kerstin Commented:

We have snow coming down by the bucket-full today :)

Seriously now, yes he is exaggerating, but for anyone who has lived in Northern Europe for a while, especially England, it can rain, rain, rain for days without end. There may be a break here and there, but the impression is that it rains without reprieve.

Growing up in Southern Germany I do recall a few summers in the 70s when we really didn't get a summer. It happens when over the Azor Islands the summer high pressure systems don't get fully established keeping the clouds away. Then what you get is one low pressure system after another like pearls on a string and the temperatures stay, at the most, in the mid-60s and at night into the 40s. It's downright depressing!

Also part of this living in innocence and the sense of belonging and feeling sheltered is that children live very much in the present moment. We lose this as we grow older. Their experiences are so vivid precisely because they live in the present. We are most alive when we are in the present moment, the moment where God dwells.

These days there is a lot of talk about "mindfulness," one of these ubiquitous ersatz-terms formed in a secular culture that purposefully shuns the Christian past. Yet despite all that, being made in the image of God, people are looking for the vividness of the present moment, for the encounter with God.

My Reply:

Well, keep it in your part of the country! :-P It just rained here five out of the last six days. Cold weather tends to be dryer, so I can't say I've seen it snow for more than two days in a row. Now twelve days of snow is definitely an exaggeration!

Your other comments were right on Kerstin.

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One last thought on the story.  Dylan Thomas is a poet and this does come close to a prose poem, One should appreciate the poetic elements of the writing.  I already quoted two wonderful passages above.  Plunging hands in the snow and pulling out the memory of the fire at Mrs. Prothero remains for me an incredible image.  And snow falling in buckets and the drifts “shallawling” (what a wonderful word, a present participle of the noun shawl) the ground and snow growing out of the roofs as if it were vegetation.  There is artistry in every paragraph.

Notice his use of alliteration in this passage.

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.

Notice the “w” sounds: wolves, Wales, whisked, wallowed, when, we, with, wheel.  (By the way, I looked it up; there had not been wolves in Wales for at least 500 years before.  More exaggeration!)  Notice the “s” sounds: sang, smelt, Sunday, snowed.  Notice the “h” sounds: harp, horse, happy, hills.  Notice the “p” sounds: petticoats, parlors.  Also, out of the 86 words in the paragraph, a full eighteen have an “s” ending sound to compliment the initial “s” sounding words.  That paragraph just sounds beautiful.  And its pacing is rhythmic.  The four  “when” clauses just pounds the rhythm. 

Or how about this marvelous descriptive passage of the snow filled streets:

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two curling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars.

Again you can find the alliteration, the “s” sounds, the “b” sounds, the “f” sounds.  It’s a subtle alliteration, not the overbearing alliteration of an old Anglo-Saxon poem, where five of six words in a line might start with the same consonant.  It’s neatly interspersed to accentuate the Englishness of the language.  What I also like about this passage is its rhythm, this time generated by short phrases separated by commas: “an old man always”/fawn- bowlered”/ “yellow-gloved”/” at this time of year”/” with spats of snow” which leads into a longish clause followed by more short phrases separated by commas: “sometimes two hale young men”/” with big pipes blazing”/” no overcoats and wind blown scarfs”/” would trudge”/” unspeaking” and so on, ending with a longish clause.  The overall structure of the passage is longish clause as opening statement, series of short phrases, longish clause, series of short phrases, longish clause.  Not just poetry has rhythm.  Great prose develops rhythms too.

And how about the vividness of Christmas dinner:

For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Aunt Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush.

I just love the abundance of that passage.  It’s only 98 words but it captures the food, the uncles, the fire place, the aunts, the singing, the sleeping, the drinking, the dog, the mouse. 

There are other passages I could highlight, but they exhibit the similar attributes as these.

And lastly I should highlight some of the memorable phrases: “the carol-singing sea,” “Eskimo-footed artic marksmen,” “the gong was bombilating,” postmen “with sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet” who “crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully.  Sometimes a whole sentence is superb such as this: “Men and women wading, scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddled their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow.”  Albinos refers to being covered with snow, and nice contrast between coming from chapel and the irreligious snow.  Descriptions such as the delicate aunts who were “poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers.”  And of course that ending that is so evocative, “I said some words to the close and holy darkness.”  That is so much more powerful than if he had said, “I prayed to God” or “I said my bedtime prayers.”  Dylan Thomas is a wonderful poet. 

I said above that it felt the story was created ad hoc. Perhaps now I have second thoughts about that.  Perhaps the flow of the narrative was ad hoc but there is so much wonderful craft inside the narrative that it had to be honed.  For me, this was an outstanding work of art.

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Frances Commented:

Manny, your observations are excellent, professional. In your reading of “wolves, Wales, whisked, wallowed . . . ,” were you reminded of these lines: “Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivelled snow...?” Gerard Manley Hopkins composed “The Wreck of the Deutschland” at St. Bruno’s College in Wales.

“So long as he remained in the surroundings of North Wales . . . his Muse rejoiced in a glad springtime. . . But from the time he went north into the waste land of industrial Lancashire, his enthusiasm was abated.” (Landscape and Inscape, by Peter Milward, S.J.)

My Reply:

I know I've read “The Wreck of the Deutschland” but unfortunately it doesn't come back to me without refreshing my memory. Alliteration is a large part of Gerard Manly Hopkins. Hopkins use of alliteration is usually like that of the old Anglo-Saxon poetry, sometimes reshaping the modern language. I think Thomas, here at least, accentuates the English rather than alters it. That's not to say I dislike what Hopkins does. Just different intentions.

Kerstin Commented:

Since Anglo-Saxon has a lot of German in it, I had to think of a poem I remember from childhood that was written in this style. When I was 8 or 9 I used to know all 6 verses by heart. Now I can only recite the first!

Friedrich Rückert (1788 - 1866)

Roland, der Ries'

Roland, der Ries', am

Rathaus zu Bremen,

steht er ein Standbild

standhaft und wacht.

Roland, der Ries', am

Rathaus zu Bremen,

männlich die Mark einst

hütend die Macht.

...

Trying to translate it would be impossible to keep the alliteration, except for the third line.

Roland the giant

At city hall in Bremen

Stands as a statue

and watches

My Reply:

That's very interesting Kerstin. It makes me wonder if alliteration is integral to German poetry. Beowulf was actually written on the continent by the people who would eventually move on to Britain. But it was a specific group of Germanic tribes, so I don't know whether their version of the language and literature made its way into the modern German language. Actually as I think about it, I know very little of the development of German. I'm fairly knowledgeable on the Romance languages and English of course, but with English we usually start its history with Beowulf. I would imagine the development of German would be complex, with all the different tribes as they made their way south over time from Scandinavia.

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My Review at Goodreads:

This is a prose poem on a nostalgic retrospective of a time more innocent, a look back to the poet’s Christmases as a child in Wales.  Through voices and sounds coming from the past, through humor and exaggeration, even mock epic, through suggestions of faith and boyish activities, Dylan Thomas builds a world where joy and love and, indeed, belonging that evokes the spirit of Christmas.  The voices and sounds, conveyed through sparkling prose which is near poetic, are part of his soul, and as he falls asleep he relives that innocent time.  And then after the exhilaration of a child’s Christmas elation, he gets into bed, says “some words to the close and holy darkness,” and then falls asleep.  Sleep frames the story, pleasant sleep, grace-filled sleep.