There are two foremost binary oppositions in “A Warning to Children”: Greatness/Rareness binary and Muchness/ Fewness binary. These binaries may seduce the children to pursue alluring ‘greatness and muchness’ instead of concentrating on inimitable ‘rareness and fewness.’
The binaries are not outright guiding principles in children’s lives for they elicit weighty misunderstandings: “Blocks of slate enclosing dappled/Red and green, enclosing tawny/Yellow nets, enclosing white/And black acres of dominoes.” The “dappled blacks, red and green, yellow, white and black” do not fall under the binaries. Consequently, banking on the binaries would encumber the children from disentangling the multi-colored, intricate blocks, nets, and dominoes.
“A Warning to Child” calls on children to rise above puzzling binaries: “Children, leave the string alone!/For who dares undo the parcel/Finds himself at once inside it,/On the island, in the fruit.” The educative clarion call conjectures that children should abstain from the unyielding quest for ‘muchness and greatness’ that are incarnated by the “Blocks of slate about his head,/Finds himself enclosed by dappled/Green and red, enclosed by yellow/Tawny nets, enclosed by black/And white acres of dominoes.” The chase would be fruitless as it would take the children back to the “same brown paper parcel.” The hunt for ‘muchness and greatness’ is a fragment of unsystematic, chaotic identity.
