MY CHILDHOOD IMPRESSIONS

by José Rizal

I spent many, many hours of my childhood

down on the shore of the Lake, Laguna de bay.
I was thinking of what was beyond.
I was dreaming of what might be over on the other side of the waves.
Almost every day, in our town, we saw the Guardia civil lieutenant
caning and injuring some unarmed and inoffensive villager.
The villager’s only fault was that while at a distance
he had not taken off his hat and made his bow.

The alcalde treated the poor villagers

in the same way whenever he visited us.
We saw no restraint put upon brutality.
Acts of violence and other excesses were committed daily.
The officers whose duty it was to protect the people
and keep the public peace were the real outlaws.
Against such lawbreakers, our authorities were powerless.
I asked myself if, in the lands which lay across the lake,the people lived in the same way.
I wondered if there they tortured any countryman
with hard and cruel whips merely on suspicion.
Did they there respect the home?
Or over yonder also, in order to live in peace,
would one have to bribe tyrants?
 Interpretation:

For me, I interpret this poem as a young innocent child and his eyes
are being opened with reality at a young age. A young child who just
want to explore and see the beauty of the world but he witnessed the
cruelty and the abnormality of the minds of the leaders. In a child’s
eyes, seeing how abrupt and violent his environment has become it
makes one child to imagine a place where peace and order is in
action. He thought of beautiful things but what he thought was too
far from the reality he saw during his childhood years. Innocent
people received violence and brutality, they can’t act because they
are powerless.

Also, the poem merely says how one child can describe his whole
world with the environment he is living in. Which also means that a
child cannot embrace the beauty of the place he has lived in because
of the cruelty exposed by the aura of people around him. In shorter
terms, a young child has been awakened of what an adult citizen of
the country should be aware of. The young child also thought of a
beautiful shore waiting at the end of the lake, but too many questions
bothered him because of the inhuman regulations.

1. Caning -- beat, strike, hit, flog, thrash, lash, birch, flagellate;

2. Restraint -- a measure or condition that keeps someone or something under
control or within limits.
3. Brutality -- savage physical violence; great cruelty.
4. Outlaws -- a person who has broken the law, especially one who remains at large
or is a fugitive.
synonyms: fugitive, (wanted) criminal, public enemy, outcast, exile, pariah; More
 5. Lawbreakers -- a person who violates the law.
6. Whips -- move fast or suddenly in a specified direction
7. Suspicion -- a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true.
"she had a sneaking suspicion that he was laughing at her"
synonym intuition, feeling, impression, inkling, hunch, fancy, notion, supposition, belief, idea, th
s: eory; More
8. Yonder -- 1. at some distance in the direction indicated; over there.
"there's a ford south of here, about nine miles yonder"
determiner
archaicdialect
determiner: yonder
9. Bribe -- verb
verb: bribe; 3rd person present: bribes; past tense: bribed; past participle: bribed;
gerund or present participle: bribing

persuade (someone) to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of

money or other inducement.
"an undercover agent bribed the judge into giving a lenient sentence"
synonyms: buy off, pay off, suborn; More
10. tyrant -- a cruel and oppressive ruler.
"the tyrant was deposed by popular demonstrations"
synonyms: dictator, despot, autocrat, authoritarian, oppressor;