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What is the significance of the title of the poem "The Flower School"?

The title of the poem "The Flower School" by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore serves two main functions. It piques readers' interest due to its paradoxical nature and it introduces the main themes and metaphors of the poem.


As readers, we are aware that flowers, unlike humans, do not actually attend schools. This means that when we encounter the title of the poem, we are immediately curious about what the poet could mean by the phrase and this curiosity causes us to continue reading.


Next, the title introduces the central metaphor, which is complex. On one level, Tagore is comparing the flowers to children. Just as children are schooled indoors and then released to bloom, as it were, in the world, so flowers start underground and bloom visibly above ground. On a more profound level though, Tagore is a deeply religious Hindu who is comparing our lives on earth in human bodies to the underground where flowers exist in nascent forms as seeds or the schools in which children are trained; the soul's release from the body is parallel to children being let out of school or seeds growing into flowers. The world is thus our "flower school".

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