My Future
"Let's make him a sailor," said Father,
"And he will adventure the sea."
"A soldier," said Mother, "is rather
What I would prefer him to be."
"A lawyer," said Father, "would please me,
For then he could draw up my will."
"A doctor," said Mother, "would ease me;
Maybe he could give me a pill."
Said Father: "Lt's make him a curate,
A Bishop in gaiters to be."
Said Mother: "I couldn't endure it
To have Willie preaching to me."
Said Father: ""Let him be a poet;
So often he's gathering wool."
Said Mother with temper: "Oh stow it!
You know it, a poet's a fool."
Said Farther: "Your son is a duffer,
A stupid and mischievous elf."
Said Mother, who's rather a huffer:
"That's right - he takes after yourself."
Controlling parental emotion
They turned to me, seeking a cue,
And sudden conceived the bright notion
To ask what I wanted to do.
Said I: "my ambition is modest:
A clown in a circus I'd be,
And turn somersaults in the sawdust
With audience laughing at me."
. . . Poor parents! they're dead and decaying,
But I am a clown as you see;
And though in no circus I'm playing,
How people are laughing at me!
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Robert William Service presents a comic family argument about a child's future, with the father and mother tossing out respectable careers one after another: sailor, soldier, lawyer, doctor, curate, even poet. Each suggestion is undercut by family teasing, and the poem builds toward the child's own answer, which is both ridiculous and revealing. Instead of choosing a noble profession, he says he wants to be a circus clown, delighting in public laughter.
The ending gives the poem its sharp twist. What begins as a playful domestic debate turns into a bitterly funny self-portrait in hindsight, because the child grows up to become a clown in a broader, less literal sense. Service turns the final lines into a joke about reputation, failure, and the possibility that a life can resemble performance even outside the circus ring. The poem's central tension lies in the gap between parental expectations and personal fate: the parents imagine usefulness, dignity, and status, while the child accepts absurdity and entertainment, only to discover that the world has been laughing at him all along.
Theme
- Parental expectations - The poem satirizes the way parents project ambitions onto a child, treating his future as a contest of respectable professions rather than a matter of individual desire.
- Irony of fate - The child's wish to be a clown becomes a cruelly comic prediction of his adult life, giving the poem a final sting beneath its humor.
- Social status and respectability - Careers such as lawyer, doctor, bishop, and soldier represent socially approved success, and the poem gently mocks how eagerly adults value those roles.
- Humor as self-defense - The child answers the family's seriousness with absurdity, using clowning as a way to resist pressure and make light of their control.
- Family conflict - The poem captures a lively domestic quarrel in which affection and insult overlap, showing how families can be both affectionate and cutting at once.
- Performance and identity - By ending with the image of public laughter, the poem suggests that identity itself can become a kind of performance, shaped by how others see us.
Literary Devices
- Dialogue - The poem is built almost entirely from spoken exchanges, which gives it the quick pace and comic energy of a family scene overheard in real time.
- Irony - The child's desire to be a clown seems childish at first, but the ending transforms it into a grimly funny comment on the speaker's adult condition.
- Repetition - The repeated pattern of parent, profession, and objection creates a rhythmic back-and-forth that heightens the sense of comic bickering.
- Contrast - Service contrasts dignified careers with the absurdity of clowning, making the final choice stand out sharply against the family's hopes.
- Hyperbole - The parents' exaggerated dismissals and the speaker's dramatic self-description as a clown enlarge the humor and sharpen the satire.
- Verse satire - The light, conversational form allows the poem to mock social ambition and family pride without losing its playful surface.
- Twist ending - The last lines reframe the whole poem, turning a childhood joke into a bleakly comic judgment on the speaker's life.
Symbolism
- Sailor - A symbol of adventure and risk, representing a romantic ideal of masculine independence.
- Soldier - A symbol of duty and public service, showing one conventional route to honor and discipline.
- Lawyer - A symbol of legal and financial respectability, especially when linked to the father's will.
- Doctor - A symbol of care, usefulness, and practical authority within family life.
- Curate/Bishop - A symbol of religious status and moral seriousness, presented here with comic skepticism.
- Clown - A symbol of absurdity, entertainment, and social humiliation, capturing both the child's wish and the adult outcome.
- Circus - A symbol of public spectacle, suggesting a world where identity is exposed to laughter and judgment.
Tone
Service's tone is playful, sarcastic, and increasingly wry, as he turns a domestic conversation into a comic jab at ambition and authority. The mood for the reader begins as light amusement, but it deepens into something more unsettled by the final stanza, where the laughter feels less innocent and more like an emblem of embarrassment, failure, or fate.
Historical Context
Robert William Service is often associated with popular verse, humorous storytelling, and a direct, conversational style that appealed to broad early twentieth-century audiences. His poetry frequently blends comic rhythm with a sudden sting at the end, and that technique suits a light-verse piece like this one, where everyday speech becomes the engine of the joke.
The poem also reflects a period when respectable careers, religious office, and public service were commonly treated as markers of social ambition. Against that backdrop, the clown stands out as a deliberately anti-respectable figure, making the poem a small satire on conventional success and on the pressure placed on children to fit adult expectations.
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