The World of Grown Ups

The world of grown-ups by Ku Sang

Don't mock me and say:
Why are you so sunk in thought?
It doesn't suit your little form!

The reason I am so shocked and dumbfounded
and quite at a loss for words

is, well, oh dear, well,
is the fact that
what you adults call 'life'
is so crammed full of lies.

You shout justice, yet you act unjustly,
you mouth love, yet you hate each other,
you advocate peace as you fight and kill.

I fear I am very impertinent
but as someone else has said

unless you regain the heart of a child
you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven and
likewise if you do not regain the heart of a child
you cannot escape the snares and quicksands
of this lying world.

#12 – How this poem speaks to me

As Ms. Hatkoff mentioned in class the other day, I too have been bombarded with different questions about my values, beliefs and goals lately, especially as I am at a fork in the road. I feel as though I am in a slimy, transitional period of my life where I am in a sort of purgatory between imminent adulthood and fleeting childhood. I have been confronted by harsh realities from all aspects of my life. I chose this poem because it reflects how I feel most of the time that adults are hypocrites and the “real world” which I have been preparing to enter my entire life thus far, is full of deception and greed. Sang verbalizes my opinions, my recent conclusion that maturity is not synonymous with adulthood and I wish specific people, such as my parental units, would be able to recognize that.

Ku Sang’s poem conveys the maturity of youths and their capacity to be more discerning than adults and more true to the values that they may not understand yet are told to believe by the adults, the hypocrites. Sang begins with interrogative and exclamatory diction to emphasize the way in which children are patronized. The infantilizing diction, “sunk” and “little”, is implemented to distinguish the roles of children as defined by adults. In the second stanza, Sang speaks from the perspective of a child and reverses the roles by using a patronizing tone created by the use of the phrase “what you adults call…”. In the fourth and sixth stanzas, the use of the repetition of “you” is accusatory and highlights the hypocrisy of adults. Sang’s use of “snares and quicksands” as a metaphor for the hypocrisy, deception and double standards of this world fit perfectly as well.