Poem “A Figure Forgotten in Hours Not-of-Need” By Kee Thuan Chye (Personal Reviews)

Another powerful and meaningful poem is by Kee Thuan Chye, “A Figure Forgotten in Hours Not-of-Need”. A little brief about Kee Thuan Chye, he was born on May 25, 1954 in Penang, Malaysia. He was a noted Malaysian dramatist, poet and journalist. Kee graduated from Universiti Sains Malaysia in 1976 and received his masters in drama from England’s Essex University in 1988. Kee served as literary editor and occasional film reviewer for the New Straits Times, arts columnist for Business Times, theater columnist for New Sunday Times, and is now associate editor in charge of the English column, “Mind Our English” for The Star (Malaysia). Other publications featuring his articles and reviews include Asiaweek, Far Eastern Economic Review, and Asia Magazine.



Kee Thuan Chye, “A Figure Forgotten in Hours Not-of-Need” shows that people only totally understand, love and miss their mother when they need her help”. For the speaker in this poem, his mother, up until the point that the poem is written, was no more than a figure. However, the poem itself is an expression of the speaker’s desperation “in helpless moments” when he most understands the figure who had sacrificed so much for him, but whom he had remonstrated in the good times. Spurred on by a poignant sense of helplessness, the speaker ponders his relationship with his mother. He now understands her actions that he once condemned. He says:

You are not the purest of women
but you toiled for your children,
throwing morals coyly to the wind.
How else could we have grown up
with cushioned settees to sit on
and hot cuisine to nourish our hungry souls?

These lines strongly suggest that the speaker’s mother had compromised her morals – engaging in prostitution, perhaps? – to fund her children’s upbringing, the standards of which seemed to be quite high as the words “settees” and “cuisine” insinuate. It is now clear to the speaker that his mother did what she had to do to protect her children from the harsh realities of life. The speaker says:

Now, in helpless moments,
I think of you,
a figure forgotten
in hours not-of-need,
but a comforter of the past
who caught cockroaches with bare hands.

The speaker’s mother caught cockroaches with bare hands, a brave action which the speaker, even as an adult, is still afraid of doing. From a symbolic angle, one can argue that, in the poem, cockroaches represent the filthy realities of life – such as the compromising of one’s morals in order to protect others – which the speaker, unlike his mother, is still unwilling to face as an adult. He says:

And though it’s a sin to grow old
And to lost your dearest treasures,
You stoutly go your humdrum ways
While I curse the drudgery of life.
I am still afraid of cockroaches.

So, it would seem, from this poem, that one’s mother is especially loved, missed and finally understood only when the child is faced by life’s dilemma’s and challenges that the parent had so willingly faced up to all in the name of love for her children. In the last three lines of the poem the speaker laments:

But when I think
how little live I’ve shown you in return,
I sometimes cry.

This poem shows that woman’s sacrifice is more than anything and nothing can be compared with it.