What is the summary of the poem prayer before birth?

Answer 1

Louis MacNeice's poem "Prayer before Birth" is a typical 1930s poem, belonging to the socialist tenets of the 'Auden Generation' poetry.

It is written from the perspective of the archetypal symbol of an unborn child. The poem is the child's prayer for a better world--a world of justice and social equality instead of cruel exploitation, Horror, violence of totalitarianism and marginalization.

It is a prayer for social purity from the vices, the process of socialization inculcates into the individual. It is a re-subjective stage of the social being from which the child cries for individuality and wants to negate all forces of socio-political conformism, imposition and ideological brainwashing.

There is almost a romantic political plea in the child when it begs for pure nature--the grass, the trees and the water. The child insists that the murders, the crimes and all the sins which he may well end up commiting will not be his and rather social sins. His is a plea against the mechanization of the human subject, turning him into a mere cog. He does not want to become a stone. It is better that he gets killed before birth itself.