Nonsense Books · Chapter
Chapter VII: The History of the Seven Young Geese explained
The seven young Geese travel across a plain and encounter a strange creature they identify as a Plum-pudding Flea.
What happens
The seven young Geese travel across a plain and encounter a strange creature they identify as a Plum-pudding Flea. They sing to it, provoking it to approach and bark so loudly that all seven Geese die from the noise.
Themes in this chapter
Nonsense and Absurdity
The absurd premise of a Plum-pudding Flea with one leg and a lethal bark, and the Geese's fatal encounter, exemplifies Lear's nonsensical logic.
Mortality and Loss
The sudden and total death of all seven young Geese highlights the theme of mortality in a whimsical yet grim manner.
Characters to notice
- The Geese
The seven young Geese who travel, sing to the Plum-pudding Flea, and are killed by its barking.
- The Plum-pudding Flea
A bizarre one-legged creature with a round body, wings, beak, and three feathers, which barks lethally at the Geese.
Key passages
“When the seven young Geese began to travel, they went over a large plain, on which there was but one tree, and that was, a very bad one.”
The seven young Geese set out across a vast plain with only a single, poor-quality tree.
Describes the setting and the Geese's journey.
“Presently they perceived, a long way off, an object of the most interesting and obese appearance, having a perfectly round body exactly resembling a boiled plum-pudding, with two little wings, and a beak, and three feathers growing out of his head, and only one leg.”
They spotted a distant, intriguingly fat creature with a round body like a boiled pudding, small wings, a beak, three head feathers, and just one leg.
Introduces the Plum-pudding Flea with vivid, absurd description.
“On which the seven young Geese were greatly alarmed, and all of a tremble-bemble: so one of them put out his long neck, and just touched him with the tip of his bill; but no sooner had he done this than the Plum-pudding Flea skipped and hopped about more and more, and higher and higher; after which he opened his mouth, and, to the great surprise and indignation of the seven Geese, began to bark so loudly and furiously and terribly, that they were totally unable to bear the noise; and by degrees every one of them suddenly tumbled down quite dead.”
The Geese, trembling with fear, had one goose touch the Flea with its bill, which caused the Flea to hop wildly and then bark so ferociously that all seven Geese fell dead from the noise.
Climax and resolution: the fatal encounter with the Plum-pudding Flea.