What Has Happened to Lulu

1. Freedom and responsibilities

2. Honesty

3. Obedience and respect

4. Love and appreaciation

5. 1. The end of childhood and the loss of innocence - Lulu is probably a young teenager. - She ran away based on the note that her mother crumpled. - She took her savings "money-box" to start a new life with a man who drove her off in a "engine roar". - She left her childhood behind.

6. 2. Parent-child relationship -The mother and Lulu relationship could have been a tense and strained one. - Lulu is a rebellious teenager. - She dislikes her mother's restrictions on her freedom and emerging interest in the opposite sex. - She keeps secrets from her mother. - The mother and narrator relationship is less dramatic. - The narrator is obedient and respectful to the mother. - The narrator loves the mother very much and observe her pain and distress.

7. 3. Grief and love - The mother is grieving over the loss of her child, Lulu. - The mother clearly loves Lulu. - The narrator loves the sister as she called her by pet name "Lu". - The narrator is worried about the sudden disappearance of the elder sister

8. Themes

9. Moral Values

10. Stanza 1 meaning

10.1. The persona is questioning her mother about the mysterious and sudden disappearance of Lulu. Two pieces of Lulu's childhood have been left behind-an old rag-doll and a shoe.

11. Stanza 2 meaning

11.1. The persona observes that the windows are open wide and the curtains are 'flapping free' in the wind. The persona notices the 'dusty shelf' where 'her money-box used to be'

12. Stanza 3 meaning

12.1. The persona asks the mother why she is hiding he tears. The mother crumples up a note (most probably from Lulu) and throws it into the fire. Then, mother tells her child that 'It is nothing at all', but the persona disbelieves her

13. Stanza 4 meaning

13.1. The persona tells that she was awakened by 'voices late last night' and heard the sounds of an 'engine roar', probably a car starting up and being driven away. The mother says that the child was only dreaming.

14. Stanza 5 meaning

14.1. Undaunted, the persona insists that she heard someone cry 'in anger or in pain'. The mother says it was just 'a gust of rain'

15. Stanza 6 meaning

15.1. Puzzled about the mother's distraught behaviour, the child narrator wants to know why the mother is pacing about, uncertain what to do. The use of 'Lu' in lines 2 and 24 is an affectionate shortened form of 'Lulu'