Puppet — Summary

Once upon a time, In a world not unlike your own, There existed a puppeteer. He was a happy man, And he loved to put on shows For children who would wander by.

Using puppets he created With his own two hands, He would tell stories Of the olden days, When knights roamed Looking for dragons to slay.

One night, he was making a new puppet For his show the next day. It was his proudest work, And he was excited to show it off. As he sat back to admire his work, The man saw something that shocked him.

The puppet moved. It clicked and clacked, As it rose from where it sat; And to the puppeteer's dismay, It began to look at him With awe.

The puppeteer was terrified; Not because his puppet was alive, But because his show would be ruined. The puppet fell to its knees, And gave thanks to the puppeteer For giving it life.

But its thanks was quickly spurned, As the puppeteer set to work Trying to fix his mistake. Hitting and scraping his creation Despite the puppet's cries For him to stop.

It was to no avail. The puppet was here to stay. The puppeteer sobbed As he asked why he had been cursed With a puppet he could not control; And with that, he had an idea.

The next morning, to the children's delight, A new puppet danced along with the rest. It looked like a clown! The children laughed As the puppet bounced about. Such a pretty face.

If only they knew about The nails keeping the string attached, The paint covering the puppet's true face, The whimpers it made as it hung; But it could do nothing Without the puppeteer's approval, And so, it lamented.

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BomberJacknut's "Puppet" starts like a fairy tale, but it turns into something much darker. A cheerful puppeteer makes a new puppet, and it comes to life. Instead of wonder, he feels only terror that his show will be ruined. The puppet kneels and thanks him for its life, and he answers by hitting and scraping it, trying to undo his "mistake."

When that fails, he decides to keep the puppet and control it. The final scene is the cruelest: children laugh at a clown that seems to dance happily, while the poem reveals the nails, the paint hiding its real face, and its whimpers. The poem seems to suggest how easily suffering can hide behind a performance.

The mood moves from gentle and storybook-like to unsettling and sad. The speaker mostly observes, but the closing word "lamented" leaves us with the puppet's helpless grief and the audience's cheerful blindness.

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