Fate
One of the poem's main themes is fate. The speaker describes his difficult upbringing and contrasts it with that of children who are more fortunate than him. He details the ways in which everything in his life was stacked against him from the moment he came into the world—down to the unluckiness of his birthday. The poem explores the way in which the speaker was bound to his fate from the beginning, with no real opportunity to avoid pain and suffering. While noting the contributing factors, the speaker depicts his hard childhood, and subsequent life, as a matter of fate, something he was pushed into with no recourse. The theme of fate appears in the poem as an examination of being born into a situation one cannot leave.
Childhood
One of the poem's other central themes is childhood. The speaker describes two very different experiences of childhood: one of privilege, the other of poverty. He focuses on childhood because it is supposed to be a time of innocence and simplicity. This is demonstrated in the way that the affluent, white children are able thoughtlessly to enjoy their soft blankets and nice toys, while the speaker is left with nothing. This difference is especially stark because it shows that the speaker has essentially been robbed of his childhood. Due to the fact that no one could properly care for him, the speaker was never given the comfort of innocence. He uses childhood to show that he was immediately aware of the bad circumstances into which he was born. Additionally, the poem begins by seeming to mimic a nursery rhyme, but quickly establishes that the speaker did not experience any of the youthful whimsy present in those songs.
Race
Race is another prominent theme in the poem. While the speaker never says that he is Black, he uses language about night and darkness to describe his childhood. In contrast, he uses images of stars and light to describe the lives of the more fortunate. This creates the definitive impression that he is Black and that they are white. This functions in the poem to reveal the impact that race has had on these families' wealth and status. The speaker highlights his family's poverty in a way that shows how little control they had over it. He is being born into an oppressive system in the same way that the white children he describes were born into a world of easy luxury. These circumstances are depicted as the central driver of the speaker's fate, something he cannot get away from as it is entirely out of his control.
