A Warning to Children is a poem written by Robert Graves that foretells what it will be like to know the world in the future. Robert Graves was an English artist, a poet, historical novelist, critic, and classicist. Because of his father’s influence, he was a student of Irish mythology. Over the course of his lifetime, Graves wrote more than 140 works, including his poems, his memoir, his studies of poetic inspiration, his translations of classical texts, and his historical novels which incorporated a lot of Greek and Roman history in them.
This work is a chilling poem that predicts what the future world will be like, the world in which the children would be living. A recurring theme in the poem is the diversity that fills life. The amazingly diverseness of our lives in the increasingly connected world is something that is also increasingly avoided because of many temptations. In addition, there are many implicit instructions to avoid the diversity and lead a “better” life.
Through his usage of color, including slate, red, green, tawny yellow, white, black, and brown, Grave represents the diversity in A Warning to Children. However, these colors are repeated through the poem and creates the illusion of a never ending cycle of color and diversity, making it appear that the diversity is what makes life fulfilling and perfect. However, this image is not reality at all, as the cycle is not close to perfect at all and is easily disturbed by many factors, which includes greed, for one.
