Le Cancre

In Prévert’s poem Le Cancre, it features a 17 line story of the feelings described. I wondered while reading this whether that this was written from the perspective of what this would feel like Préverts point of view from watching someone else or if this poem was described through his own experience. This poem gives a message of someone who is passioniate and intelligent, but has dreams that the people around him say are unimportant. In the first like Prévert writes, “Il dit non avec la tête, mais il dit oui avec le coeur, il dit oui à ce qu’il aime, il dit non au professeur” (Prévert, lines 1-4), this line translates too, “He says no with his head, but he says yes with his heart, he says yes to what he loves, he says no to the teacher.” In these first four lines Jacques is describing someone who is doubted of his skills, believed that he is not smart, that the world wants to bring him down and he walks through all of it with a smile on his face and happiness in his heart.