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The Poem
What has happened to Lulu, mother?
What has happened to Lu?
There's nothing in her bed but an old rag-doll
And by its side a shoe.
Why is her window wide, mother,
The curtain flapping free,
And only a circle on the dusty shelf
Where her money-box used to be?
Why do you turn your head, mother,
And why do tear drops fall?
And why do you crumple that note on the fire
And say it is nothing at all?
I woke to voices late last night,
I heard an engine roar.
Why do you tell me the things I heard
Were a dream and nothing more?
I heard somebody cry, mother,
In anger or in pain,
But now I ask you why, mother,
You say it was a gust of rain.
Why do you wander about as though
You don't know what to do?
What has happened to Lulu, mother?
What has happened to Lu?
Meaning of Lines
Stanza 1
The persona is questioning her mother about the mysterious and sudden
disappearance of Lulu. An old rag doll and a shoe was left behind
Stanza 2
The persona saw that the windows are wide opened and the curtains
are "flapping free" in the wind. The persona also notice her money-box on the
dusty shelf is gone.
Stanza 3
The persona asks the mother why she is hiding her tears. The mother
crumples up a note (most probably from Lulu) and throws it into the fire.
Mother then tells her child that it is nothing at all. The persona does not believe
her.
Stanza 4
The persona tells that she was awakened by "voices late last night" and
heard the sounds of an "engine roar", probably a car starting up and being
driven away. The mother lies that the child was only dreaming.
Stanza 5
The persona insists that she had heard someone cry "in anger or in pain". The
mother says it was just "a gust of rain"
Stanza 6
Puzzled about the mother's distraught behavior, the narrator wants to
know why the mother is pacing about, uncertain what to do. The use of "Lu"
is an affectionate shortened form of "Lulu
The doubling of the sound in Lulu, together with the high level of repetition of both
the name and its shortening in the poem, create a strong echo of the sound which
is also the rhymed sound in the first and last stanza. This is quite a childish sound,
and helps to create the plaintive note in the childs questioning.
Attitudes, themes and ideas
The poem takes an approach that makes the reader work to figure out what has
happened. We have to piece together the clues given in the poem. This is in contrast
to the apparent simplicity of the poem provided by the ballad format and the childs
voice. Doing this also puts the reader in the position of the child, who does not
understand what is going on. We, like the narrator, have more questions than
answers. The tone is one of puzzlement.
What Has Happened to Lulu?
It deals with themes of grief and love. The mother is grieving over her lost child. The
fact that the child has run away does not make the grief less significant. The
confusion of the narrator about his or her parents reaction also tells us something
about the nature of grief.The poem also considers how we deal with children, in
dismissing what they have heard or seen. The child narrator has some valid
knowledge of what has happened, but his mother tells him he dreamed it. The poem
raises the question of how the child can react, when he has been told nothing is the
matter, when clearly it is. Ironically the mother does not know what to do, as the final
stanza makes clear.
Setting
Place
Lulu's room
The fireplace
Time
In the past
Themes
She ran away based on the note that her mother crumpled.
She took her savings "money-box" to start a new life with a man who drove
her off in a "engine roar".
2. Parent-child relationship
The mother and Lulu relationship could have been a tense and strained one.
She dislikes her mother's restrictions on her freedom and emerging interest in
the opposite sex.
The narrator loves the mother very much and observe her pain and distress.
The narrator loves the sister as she called her by pet name "Lu".
The narrator is worried about the sudden disappearance of the elder sister