The Hunchback in the Park is a poem by Dylan Thomas which is about love, nature and imagination. Thomas through this poem explores the life and activities of an artist. He creates different binary oppositions like the past and the present, the world of children and the world of adults, and the world of reality and the world of imagination. He renders the typical Wordsworthian double consciousness while dealing with two different times and two different worlds (the world of children and the world of adults).

      The poet at another level is a depiction of the life of an artist. Here, Dylan Thomas creates a distinction between the world of reality and the world of imagination. This view is exploded through the experiences of the solitary mister who visits the park everyday and who is physically deformed. In the world of reality this person is neglected, teased and tormented and he is quite cutoff from social realities. Dylan Thomas uses of phrase “solitary mister” refer to the basic reality of these persons existence that is; he is not only living in solitariness but also identity less. Despite the bitter experiences in the world of reality, this deformed person enjoys utter freedom in his world of imagination.
      The ‘Solitary Mister’ is very far-away from the sense of beauty and sense of duty in this world of reality. He is deprived of the physical beauty because of the hunch on his back and there is no sense of duty because he lives a careless life. But this very person is engaged in creativity (artistic) because he is able to transcend the bitter experiences of the world of reality that includes his physical deformity, children’s torment and his carelessness. He creates a beautiful picture of a woman in his solitariness through the use of his imagination. This image of beautiful woman does not show traces of bitter experiences of the world of reality. In this sense Dylan Thomas romanticism covers near to Keatsian romanticism because of his belief in art as a power that transcends the world of reality.
      The poem actually is about love for both children and adults. This solitary mister lives in the world of reality (day) and the world of imagination (night), where the world of imagination is dominant. The world of reality is full of suffering, where there is torment, sorrow and the bitter experiences quite contrary of the world of imagination that is full of happiness.

The Hunchback in the Park - Poem by Dylan Thomas

The hunchback in the park
A solitary mister
Propped between trees and water
From the opening of the garden lock
That lets the trees and water enter
Until the Sunday sombre bell at dark

Eating bread from a newspaper
Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship
Slept at night in a dog kennel
But nobody chained him up.

Like the park birds he came early
Like the water he sat down
And Mister they called Hey Mister
The truant boys from the town
Running when he had heard them clearly
On out of sound

Past lake and rockery
Laughing when he shook his paper
Hunchbacked in mockery
Through the loud zoo of the willow groves
Dodging the park keeper
With his stick that picked up leaves.

And the old dog sleeper
Alone between nurses and swans
While the boys among willows
Made the tigers jump out of their eyes
To roar on the rockery stones
And the groves were blue with sailors

Made all day until bell time
A woman figure without fault
Straight as a young elm
Straight and tall from his crooked bones
That she might stand in the night
After the locks and chains

All night in the unmade park
After the railings and shrubberies
The birds the grass the trees the lake
And the wild boys innocent as strawberries
Had followed the hunchback
To his kennel in the dark.