The poem ‘Night Rain’ depicts a child’s reaction to rain falling at night in a local and impoverished riverside neighborhood. Rain and how it falls is a natural occurrence that man is aware of. It could be a welcome reprieve after a long period of extreme heat. It might also be a weapon of mass destruction for mankind. We can see from the personae that the night rain, which is a natural agent, damages man because of how man has managed other components of the environment.
Rain and nature, in the first line, kill the food that man eats by causing it to slip off and break. The result of rain washing farm fields and food storage facilities away has resulted in food shortages, famine, and starvation. The language used suggests a tense relationship between the characters and nature, leading to the conclusion of a stressful scenario.
The mother faces psychological trauma waking up to salvage belongings damaged by nature, doing the task with discomfort as nobody likes such wake-up calls.
Also, it seems it only applies to the personae’s mother due to her experience as a full man. The innocent child’s voice doesn’t perceive the destruction caused by the rain as a problem. The child, who hasn’t fully developed the consciousness of a full-blown adult, cannot yet experience the effects of the strained relationship between man and nature. We know the trauma and discomfort the adult mother suffers as against the worries of the child’s voice.
This is about more than simply the man. Even animals are not immune to the devastation that rainfall delivers from nature. According to the poem
“Those wet of wings may not fly/bedraggled up on the iroko, they stand/emptied of hearts/ Therefore will not stir, no not/even at dawn,” says the narrator.
We see that the effects of the destruction are enormous as it brings heartbreaks, inactivity, and weaknesses. Rainfalls are getting heavier owing to global warming, which has grown in the past several years as a result of human industry and technical growth. These are the results of man’s improper treatment of nature.
“Mother is busy deploying/About our room let and floor/Although it is dark.”
The child’s voice in the final sentence contrasts with this:
“We will settle to our sleep of the innocent and free”
Through harmful acts such as bush burning, the adult personae have contributed to the straining of the relationship with nature. As a result, she incurs the cost of losing sleep to prevent products from being ruined by the night rain. A well-behaved child sleeps peacefully, suggesting that if humans aren’t causing harmful climate changes, we won’t face nature’s wrath.
