Class 6 English Chapter 14: The Kites

Who is speaking

A child, standing on the ground. We are never told a name or an age. We only know what the child can see. That silence is useful, because any reader can stand in that place. A named child would be somebody else. An unnamed one can be you.

What is actually happening

Kites are flying overhead. The sky is windy. That is the whole of the real action in this poem. Two facts, and nothing else takes place at all. Everything the poem goes on to describe is added by the child.

The first comparison

The kites are said to be like coloured birds. It is the poem's first line of description, and it arrives before anything else. A comparison, before any plain description.

Why that works

A kite is a flat paper thing on a string. Calling it a bird gives it life, and colour, and a sky of its own. Three things, from one short word.

Then the wish

The child wishes to be small, and light as air. Notice what is being asked for here. It is not the obvious wish. A child in a park might have asked for a kite, and this one does not.

Not a kite

The child does not wish to own one. The wish is to change, and to become light enough to climb onto a kite that is already there. No present could have supplied it.

Everything after this is imagined

From that point the poem stops describing and starts supposing. Every verb becomes a would. That one word carries the rest of the poem.

The imagined ride

The child would drift upon the paper wings. Drifting is slow and unhurried, and it is a very different word from flying. The child is imagining ease, not speed.

Paper wings

Those two words are worth stopping on. They remind you that a kite is made, and not alive, in the middle of a poem that keeps treating it as a bird. Two words, quietly putting the real thing back.

And the sound

The child would hear the songs the wild wind sings. So the imagined ride has sound in it as well as movement. Height, motion and noise, all supposed.

What fun it would be

The poem says so directly. This is a child enjoying the idea, not longing painfully for something. The poem says what fun it would be, in so many words.

Looking down

The imagined view is of the park, and the rooftops of the town. Both are things the child sees every day, and neither has ever been seen from above. The pleasure is a familiar thing at a new angle.

The last stanza

Now the people below stand and stare. They wish they were the child, high up in the air. The word high is said twice, which slows the line down.

The turn

Read the first stanza again and then this one. The child began by envying something in the sky, and ends as the thing being envied. A neat swap, and the poem never points it out. You have to read the first stanza again to notice it at all.

Still imagined

And of course none of it happened. The people staring are as imaginary as the ride, and the child is still standing in the park. Nobody has moved an inch in the whole poem.

Why the ending is cheerful

The poem never says the wish is impossible. It simply enjoys it, and stops at the best moment, which is the moment of being looked up at. A wish left standing is a pleasant thing rather than a loss.

Scenario:

A teacher asks the class to describe what happens in the poem. Most write that a child climbs onto a kite and flies over the town while people stare up. Yash writes that nothing happens at all. He has gone through the poem marking the verbs, and from the wish onwards every one of them is a would. The climbing, the drifting, the songs of the wind and the people staring are all things that would happen, not things that do. The class objects that the poem describes the flight in detail. Yash agrees, and says a detailed supposing is still a supposing.

Analysis:

A whole class read a flight. One pupil counted the verbs.

Activity:

Mark every verb in the poem and write W beside each would.

Title:

Count the woulds

What You Notice:

What is left will be a handful of words about looking and flying, and nothing else. That short list is everything the poem actually claims happened. The circled ones are longer, more detailed and more interesting, and not one of them took place. Poems often work this way, and counting is the fastest way to see it.

The poem is by Daphne Lister, and it never tells you the child's age, name or whether the child owns a kite at all.

Kites appear in Indian writing as far back as the thirteenth century. The Marathi saint-poet Namadeva called a kite a gudi.

The shape of the poem — WATCH - WISH - RIDE - BE ENVIED — One stanza of watching and three of imagining, and the last one turns the envy round.

How much really happens — Only the looking is real — Every other verb in the poem is a would. Nothing is done, and nothing is achieved.

Two things held together

The poem's first description says the kites are like coloured birds. Two quite different things have been put side by side. A flat paper thing, and a living one.

What makes it a simile

The word like. A simile compares two things and leaves the comparison visible, with like or as sitting right there in the sentence. The child wishes to be as light as air, and again the signal is showing. The child wishes to be as light as air. Again two things are compared, and again the signal is showing.

Why that matters

You have met figures of speech that hide. When leaves whispered, nothing announced it. A simile is the opposite, and announces itself every time. You have to notice one and you can hunt for the other.

The easiest one to find

So a simile is the one you can hunt for. Look for like or as, check whether two things are being compared, and you have your answer. Two steps, and no judgement needed.

What a simile buys

Calling a kite a bird gives it life. Calling a child as light as air gives you a weight you can imagine, because everybody knows how heavy air is. The reader's own knowledge does the work.

Now a sound

Read the end of the first stanza aloud. Wind-whipped. Two words, and both start with the same sound. The third stanza does it again, in the wild wind that sings. The wild wind sings. Again that same opening sound, twice in a row.

What this is called

Repeating a sound at the start of nearby words is alliteration. You met it earlier in this book, and here it is doing something particular. The choice of sound is the interesting part.

Listen to which sound

It is a w, both times. Say it slowly and you will hear that the sound itself is breathy, which is what the poem is describing. Try it and you will hear the wind in your own mouth.

The sound is the subject

That is the point. A poem about wind has chosen to repeat the sound of wind, so the reader hears the thing being described. The sound is not decoration. It is the subject.

Sound, not spelling

One warning. Alliteration is about the sound and not the letter. A k and a hard c alliterate, and a silent letter does not count at all. Use your ear and not your eye.

Then a repeated word

The last line says high, high. Not very high, and not a number of metres. The poet chose repetition over measurement.

Why repeating works there

Saying it twice makes you slow down and say it twice. The reader lingers, and lingering is what great height feels like. The line takes longer to say, and that is the point.

And the rhyme

The second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme, and the first and third are left free. That is the same pattern the bird poem used. Two poems in this book, and one arrangement.

Now the cinquain

Last comes a form to build. A cinquain is a five-line poem. It may describe a person, a place or a thing. Short, and strictly shaped.

Its five rules

One noun. Two words describing it. Three action words. Two words describing those actions. One word meaning the same as the first. The shape widens and then narrows again.

Why the rules are the form

Without them you have five lines of anything at all. The counting is what makes a cinquain a cinquain, and the last line is the subject named again. That last line is always the hardest.

Scenario:

A teacher writes four lines on the board and asks the class to name what each one is doing. The first says the kite was a bird in the sky. The second says the kite flew like a bird. The third says the wild wind whistled. The fourth says the kite climbed higher and higher. Asha says all four are similes. Ravi says only one is. The teacher tells the class Ravi is right, and asks them to say what the other three are instead. She reminds them that one figure of speech announces itself and the rest do not.

Analysis:

Four devices, and only one of them carries a signal word. The rest have to be noticed rather than spotted.

Activity:

Write four lines of your own, one for each device, and see whether a partner can sort them.

Title:

A cinquain about something in the room

What You Notice:

The last line is always the hardest, because a synonym has to be a real word and not just the first one repeated. That difficulty is the point of the form. Finding a second name for your object forces you to decide what it really is, and most people change their mind about the whole poem while looking for it.

A cinquain always ends by naming its subject a second time, in a different word. The first line and the last are the same thing twice.

Alliteration works on the sound and not the letter, so a k and a hard c alliterate perfectly well.

Finding a simile — Look for LIKE or AS — A simile always carries one of those two words. If neither is there, it is not a simile.

The cinquain's five lines — 1 NOUN - 2 - 3 - 2 - 1 — One noun, two describing words, three actions, two more, one synonym. The shape widens and narrows again.

A different listening task

You are given seven statements about the Kite Festival. Some of them contain a word that is wrong. Some, and not all, which matters more than it sounds.

What you do first

You listen once and circle any word you believe to be wrong. That is the first half. Doubt is all that is needed here.

And then the harder half

You listen again and write in the correct word. Knowing that something is wrong is far easier than knowing what is right. A reader who can repair a fact has really heard the passage. A reader who only knows a fact is wrong has learnt very little. A reader who can repair it has actually heard the passage.

The trap in this task

Three of the seven statements are perfectly correct. If you assume every one hides an error, you will invent three that are not there. So each statement has to be judged on its own, and you cannot work down the list mechanically. That single detail turns a hunt into a judgement. You cannot work through the list mechanically.

The first error

The festival is said to fall in June. It falls during Makar Sankranti, in January. A whole season out.

The second

Uttarayan is said to be celebrated in Eastern India. It belongs to the west. One direction, and one word.

The third

Maharashtra is named alongside Gujarat and Telangana. The passage names Rajasthan there instead. One state quietly swapped for another.

The fourth

Kites are said to be flown on Earth Day. They are flown across India on Independence Day. Both days are real, which is what makes it slip past.

What is correct

The kites really do come in different shapes, sizes and colours. Karnataka's Tourism Department really does organise a festival each year. Punjab really does fly kites at Baisakhi and Basant Panchami. Three statements, and nothing to circle in any of them.

Then the speaking

You describe a kite-flying experience of your own. If you have never flown one, you describe watching them. Nobody is left without something to say.

The four questions

Where, when, why and how. Answer all four in complete sentences and a listener can picture the day without asking you anything. Answering in single words gives a list rather than an account, and a list can be true and still leave a listener with nothing to see. Answering in single words gives a list, not an account. A list can be true and still leave a listener with nothing to see.

Then the writing

Now you write about a hundred words, and the title is given to you: I am a Kite. The title is doing more work than a title usually does.

In the kite's own voice

Notice the word am. You are not writing about a kite. You are writing as one, which means everything is described from inside it. Check that every sentence uses I or my.

What to include

Your shape and colours. The parts of yourself you are pleased with. Where you are, who you belong to, what you do, and who your friends are. Four questions, and none of them about appearance.

And a message

The last hint asks whether you have anything to say to humans. The bird in an earlier chapter was asked for exactly the same thing. Two creatures in one book, both given the last word.

Some words you will need

A kite has a nose at its tip and a spine down its middle. It has a cover, a tail, a line and a reel that wraps the line. Six named parts, and you will want them all.

Scenario:

A teacher plays the passage about the Kite Festival. Devi listens once and circles a word in all seven statements. She is sure the task would not give her a statement with nothing wrong in it. Farid circles four and leaves three alone. On the second listening Devi finds she cannot supply a correction for three of her circles. She tries anyway, and changes different into many, Tourism into Culture, and Baisakhi into Diwali. Farid writes January, Western, Rajasthan and Independence Day beside his four. The teacher marks them and Farid has seven right.

Analysis:

Devi found four real errors and three imaginary ones. Her method guaranteed the last three before she heard a word.

Activity:

Write five statements about something you know, with errors in only two, and try them on a partner.

Title:

Speak the four questions

What You Notice:

The four single words will be entirely accurate and will tell your partner almost nothing. That gap is the whole reason the task asks for sentences. What a sentence adds is not more facts but the small connecting words, and those are what a listener builds a picture out of.

Kites appear in Indian writing as early as the thirteenth century. The Marathi saint-poet Namadeva called a kite a gudi in his gathas.

He also records that kites were made of kaagad, which is paper, so the paper wings of this poem are very old indeed.

A kite has named parts like a body: a nose at the tip, a spine down the middle, a cover, a tail, a line and a reel.

The listening task — CIRCLE, then CORRECT — The first listening finds the fault. The second supplies the repair, which is the harder half.

Describing an experience — WHERE - WHEN - WHY - HOW — Four questions, answered in full sentences. A listener needs no more than that.