"Originally" - Summary , Themes, symbols

Summary 

The speaker recounts her family’s departure from their homeland in a red car racing through fields, her mother softly repeating her father’s name over the hum of the wheels. Her brothers wept, one desperately calling out for home as they left their city, street, house, and the empty rooms they once inhabited. Clutching her stuffed animal, the speaker gazed into its blank eyes and held its paw for comfort.

She reflects that childhood itself mirrors the act of leaving one’s homeland. Sometimes, this departure is gradual, leaving you to walk a lonely road, accepting reality in a place where no one is familiar. Other times, it’s abrupt—your accent feels foreign, and familiar corners lead to confusing new neighbourhoods where older boys eat worms and shout unfamiliar words. The speaker sensed her parents’ anxiety like a loose tooth wobbling in her mind, longing to return to the comfort of her homeland.

Over time, though, memories fade or transform. Watching her brother swallow a slug, the speaker felt only a faint pang of shame. She shed her old accent like a snake sheds its skin, blending in with her classmates’ speech. Does she truly believe she lost her homeland’s landscape, culture, voice, and her first true sense of belonging? Now, when strangers ask where she’s originally from, she finds herself unsure of how to answer.

Themes in “Originally”

The Pain of Growing Up

Through a reflective and sorrowful lens, the speaker in “Originally” examines the loss of identity tied to her family’s emigration from Scotland to England, capturing a universal sense of displacement—the feeling of being perpetually out of place. The poem suggests that growing up itself is a departure from “our own country,” a loss of the sense of belonging in both the world and oneself.

As her family drives away from Scotland, the speaker experiences a painful separation not only from her homeland but also from her childhood. In the backseat, she feels scared and disoriented, leaving behind the familiar places of her youth. Turning to her stuffed animal for comfort, she finds it reduced to a “blind toy,” symbolizing the abrupt loss of her childhood imagination and innocence, alongside her homeland.

Emigration here represents more than leaving a place; it signifies the loss of safety, comfort, and connection that home embodies. The speaker’s homesickness for Scotland doubles as a longing for the security and joy of childhood. She explicitly connects emigration to growing up, stating, “All childhood is an emigration,” suggesting that both involve disorienting losses of identity. Familiar “corners” lead to strange, unsettling places, and encounters with “big boys” who curse and eat worms evoke the fear of growing up and facing an unfamiliar world.

The speaker’s Scottish accent becomes a source of shame, marking the loss of childhood’s unselfconscious ease. As her “tongue / shedding its skin like a snake” adapts to an English accent, the imagery recalls the serpent in the Garden of Eden, framing her loss of Scottish identity as a fall from grace into the compromises and alienation of adulthood. The poem suggests that everyone who grows up experiences this displacement, a longing for the “first space / and the right place” of their childhood selves.

Emigration and Identity While the poem uses emigration as a metaphor for the pain of growing up, it also directly addresses the isolating and confusing reality of literal emigration. Leaving one’s homeland leads not only to homesickness but also to a profound loss of identity and a sense of isolation.

As the speaker’s family drives away from Scotland, she feels disconnected from the markers of her former self—the city, street, house, and empty rooms they no longer inhabit. In England, familiar-looking “corners” deceive her, leading to unfamiliar and disorienting places, unlike the vivid memory of Scotland’s “vacant rooms.” This new environment leaves her feeling unmoored, alone on an “avenue / where no one [she] know[s] stays,” reflecting the loneliness of a new country.

Her sense of isolation deepens as she struggles to understand the shouts of older children and feels her Scottish accent is “wrong,” as if her very voice no longer belongs. Though she eventually adopts an English accent, assimilating into her new culture, traces of her Scottish identity persist, evident in her use of the dialect word “skelf” (splinter). Yet this lingering Scottishness feels fragmented, like a “skelf” itself, leaving her identity incomplete. When asked where she’s from “originally,” her hesitation reveals a deeper loss—not just of a river, culture, or speech, but of a clear sense of who she is.

Symbols in “Originally”

Snakes

When the speaker describes her “tongue / shedding its skin like a snake” as she adapts to her new life in England, she invokes a powerful symbol steeped in tradition. Snakes, with their venomous bites and ability to shed their skin, have long represented treachery and deception, most notably in the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. In that tale, the serpent deceives Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, leading to their first feelings of shame and self-awareness—an end to their innocent state. This narrative mirrors the loss of childhood innocence that comes with growing into adulthood, much like how young children revel in their unselfconscious freedom.

By likening her changing accent to a snake, the speaker connects her experience to this symbolic loss. Shedding her Scottish accent feels like a betrayal of her true self, as she mimics her English peers. The snake imagery ties her to both the fallen Eve, who loses paradise, and the deceitful serpent, suggesting that her transformation is both a loss and a quiet injury to her identity. It reflects the pain of leaving behind the “first space / and the right place” of her childhood and homeland.

Where this symbol appears:

• Lines 19-21: “I remember my tongue / shedding its skin like a snake, my voice / in the classroom sounding just like the rest.”

Rivers

In the poem’s final stanza, the river symbolizes the spirit of the homeland the speaker left behind, as well as the life she might have lived. Rivers often embody the soul of a place—think of the Thames for London or the Tiber for Rome. Beyond this, they represent the relentless flow of time and the trajectory of life. By “losing a river,” the speaker mourns not only her connection to her Scottish city but also the entire course her life could have taken had her family stayed. The river encapsulates both her cultural roots and the irreversible passage of her childhood.

Where this symbol appears:

• Lines 21-23: “Do I only think / I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space / and the right place?”

The Blind Toy

As the speaker’s family drives away from Scotland, she seeks comfort by clutching her stuffed animal’s paw, but it has become “a blind toy,” a lifeless object unable to offer solace. This toy serves as a poignant symbol of lost childhood innocence. Many readers may recall a moment when a cherished toy transformed from a companion into a mere object, marking a painful but inevitable shift. For the speaker, the toy’s unseeing eyes reflect the abrupt change in her life—from her Scottish roots to an unfamiliar English world, and from the innocence of childhood to the self-conscious awareness of adulthood. The “blind toy” underscores the impossibility of returning to the “first space / and the right place” of her early years.

Where this symbol appears:

• Lines 7-8: “I stared / at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.”