Concerning "The Idiot Boy" By William Wordsworth

I thoroughly enjoyed Wordsworth's poem, The Idiot Boy. The moon's light in relation to Johnny’s story was particularly interesting to me. In the beginning of the poem, the scene is described as "The moon is up, the sky is blue..."(Lyrical Ballads pg. 88, ll. 2). I believe this sets up an interesting twilight landscape. According to the OED, this stage of the day “…prevails between daylight and darkness”(OED online). The fact that this is a transitional period had me waiting for the ‘dark’ event or situation of the poem to present itself as I read.  

The moon reflects the sun’s light, and is a symbol of what is known, bright, and good in opposition to the unknown darkness of night. Shining in the moonlit night is our hero, Johnny, in lines fifty-nine through sixty-one. His charge is to go to town and retrieve the doctor for his neighbor Susan. Wordsworth does a fantastic job of mocking the critics of his time who thought that his poem contained, “disgusting images of ordinary morbid idiocy”(Lyrical Ballads pg. 88). Johnny is the main character of the poem; he is our hero strategically placed so that we might consider the way we view people who have mental disabilities. We must face the fact that our champion rides a pony instead of a steed, carries a stick in his hand instead of a sword, and babbles instead of delivering epic soliloquies.  

The expected dark situation of the poem is when Johnny ends up lost in the woods. Betty, his mother, gets very worried and eventually searches the forest looking for him. Johnny is finally found next to a waterfall where he “burrs and laughs aloud…”(Lyrical Ballads pg. 99 ll. 387). Wordsworth mocks the customary hero’s journey wherein the champion is in danger and slays the literal or metaphorical dragon. Instead, Johnny has something different to offer to the story and reader. A very important line of the poem reads, “Of moon or stars he takes no heed; Of such we in romances read…”(Lyrical Ballads pg. 99 ll. 364-365). Johnny enjoys and converses with Nature in a simple and innocent way. His pleasure is uncorrupted and he is able to freely follow the fluxes and refluxes of his mind when agitated by his Nature, just as Wordsworth explains is part of humanity in his Preface (Lyrical Ballads pg. 394). Johnny is a true romantic, and through his story the reader gains an understanding that we can learn a lot from those who have mental disabilities, because they exemplify that “men who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply”( http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/christopher-wordsworth/memoirs-of-william-wordsworth-volume-1-2dr/page-12-memoirs-of-william-wordsworth-volume-1-2dr.shtml).