MIKE TEAVEE....
ABOUT THE POEM
'MIKE TEAVEE ’ is a famous poem of Dahl that advises and inspires to read books instead of watching the television. This is one of the most relevant poems of our time. The poem takes a comic look at a serious problem among young children today. It warns us about the dangers of watching television excessively. TV robs our minds of the power of imagination and creativity.
Explanation of the poem:-
Roald Dahl advises that people should never ever allow their children to go near the television set. It is even better not to install ‘the idiotic thing’ called television.
The poet shares his experience here. In almost every house he has visited, he had seen children gaping at the screen. They were staring with their eyes wide open and with absolute concentration of mind. For sitting a long time before the television set, they become tired. Sometimes they sit or lie in a lazy and casual manner. But still, they stare at the television until their eyes are too tired to watch any more (their eyes pop out).
All these are not poets imagination. He indeed saw a dozen eyeballs, i.e., half a dozen children sitting on the floor at someone’s house very recently, say last week. When the children were before a television set, they “sit and stare and stare and sit” for long hours. They don’t seem to be moving from there, as they probably forget everything around them in the real world. Rather, the one they watch on the television becomes real for the time being.
They are almost hypnotized by this idiotic box. They are ‘absolutely drunk’, their minds are filled with those ‘shocking ghastly junk’ which are mostly unreal and inappropriate for the age. Those TV shows kill their valuable time and make them lazy with no room for their physical play and exercise. They have no scope of spending time with books and nature, and interacting with others. Their minds, filled with the images and stories of a virtual world, are compared to a drunk man’s imaginary world .
The poet now says that he knows that the television keeps the naughty children calm. When they are in front of a TV set, they no more do mischievous things like climbing out the window sill, fighting, kicking and punching. They let the mother free to cook the lunch and wash the dishes in the sink without any disturbance. But that can’t be an excuse to let them sit before a TV, because the poet thinks that the idiotic device does more harm than good.
The poet now asks the parents whether they ever spent a moment to think exactly what harm this television does to their loving child. He himself answers it in a brilliant way.
By watching the television continuously children are drawn away from the reality, the real world around them. They just believe what they watch, without considering the context.
It also kills the power of imagination in the mind. Children start to live in a pre-set imaginary world that they see on the screen. They slowly lose their own creative thinking, their own imagination. Though what TV shows display are mostly fictional, that is a close imitation of the real world, not a completely different world as in a fairy tale.
Roald Dahl continues to argue on how television affects a child’s mind. Children watch different shows on different channels. Sometimes there are contradictory ideas. Sometimes, it does not match with reality and they are surprised. Thus, these things clog and clutter up the mind – mess up the organised ideas and thoughts.
Moreover, the child forgets to think on his own. His entire mind is full of the images he has seen on the TV. So how would he get the time and scope to think over other things? His important time is wasted in the thoughts that are fictional and not related to his own life. Thus his study and thoughts on how to improve his skills and personality are neglected. This is as if the child gradually becomes ‘dull and blind’.
The poet feels that due to the imposed limitation on thoughts, the children can no longer understand a fantasy or a fairy tale. They cannot extend their imaginative power to that level.
Poet says that by watching television, the brain becomes soft like cheese. Children now believe everything they watch or hear on TV. They cannot find their own logic to analyse and interpret a thing. The power of thinking, the thought process freezes and gets rusty. They cannot think on their own. All they do is watching and believing what others say on TV.
Now the poet says that he knows what the readers or especially the parents would ask him. The question is how parents shall entertain their affectionate children if they take the TV set away from them. The poet answers the above question only by throwing a question. What people used to do to keep themselves entertained when television was not invented? TV set is a dreaded device, a monster to him. He wants to remind people what they used to do in the absence of such a device.
The poet himself reminds us that children in earlier times used to read lots of books. Surprisingly people then spent half of their lifetime by reading books.
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