Question

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set-----
Or better still, just don't install
The Idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
we've watched them gaping at the screen
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.

Read the lines given above and answer the question given below. 

Explain with reference to context.

Answer 1

These lines are taken from the poem TELEVISION, written by Roald Dahl, a British novelist, short story writer and a poet. It is taken from his collection ‘Revolting Rhymes’. It is a stinging satire on Television. In this poem Roald Dahl expresses concern over what the modern invention the television set has done to children. He points out that watching TV has become a craze in modem time. Children of today spend hours together in front of the ‘idiot box’. Roald Dahl is addressing all British parents and telling them that the most important thing one must learn while raising children is to keep them away from the television set. He also says that it is possible to come to a better solution to the problem by not installing a television set in their homes in the first place.

They are unable to take the eyes off the screen. They are fascinated and intoxicated by the meaningless entertainment that is churned out on TV. They laze around in front of the television and gape at the screen. They lose the capacity to think. It also prevents them from using their imagination in a creative way. They laze around in front of the television and gape at the screen. They lose the capacity to think. It also prevents them from using their imagination in a creative way. They behave like zombies, and have no control over their minds.

The poet bemoans the fact and feels that parents should encourage children to read books instead of watching TV. The poet uses rhyming couplets. The use of verbs like Toll’, ‘pop’ and lounge aptly describe the postures adopted by children while watching television. Dahl further speaks as if he has undertaken a long research on the bad effects of watching television by visiting a large number of households in Britain. In most houses, he has found the children lazing about all day and staring at the television screen without doing any productive work at all. Next, he indulges in a bit of exaggeration that is nonetheless amusing when he says that sometimes the children stare so hard that their eyeballs fall off and he has seen a dozen eyeballs rolling about on the floor in one house. Dahl says that children entire attention is captured by the television screen and they cannot concentrate on anything other than what they are watching.