In the poem,”forgiving my father,” by Lucille Clifton a relationship is being discussed between a daughter and a father. There seems to be some complications between the two. It appears to be more of an angry feeling rather than sympathy. Something seems to have happened between the speaker and her family, more specifically her father. For some reason the daughter, who is also the speaker in the poem described her father as an, “ old liar “. The statement made by the daughter, “payday,” could potentially be a substitution for time.
In the opening of the first stanza the speaker states, “ it is friday. we have come to the paying of the bills.” and right off the bat it seems to be talking about money or the possibility of it meaning time. The
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This seems to suggest that her father perhaps had cheated on her mother. No child ever wants their mother, the one who gave them birth and cared for them all their life to be hurt in such a cruel way. So now it appears that the daughter wants her father to pay back all of the damage he has caused in their family. She wants to forgive him but he must pay first. She also mentions him being an,” old pauper old prisoner old dead man,” such language would only be used in a necessary situation. It seems as if the daughter truly feels disappointed that this has happened to her and her mother. When the speaker exclaimed, “you gave her all you had which was nothing. you have already given her all you had,” it appears she believed what her parents had wasn’t real and it may seem to her that she wasn’t meant to be. When one looks at other stories about similar situations one comes to a realization that the cheating person never really cared about the other or stopped caring for a while. But when a couple has a child it's different because there is a human being watching these mistakes that could possibly harm them. It gets worse if that is child is older and has a better understanding of the situation. No child should have to go through the separation of their parents. When having to choose a side it hurts because even though one may hurt you, you …show more content…
The speaker may have believed that her mother deserved way more than what she got from her father. What lead to the idea of bills being time was the energy the speaker was giving off. She made the readers look at her father as a bad man along with her. The speaker states, “ i wish you were rich so i could take it all and give the lady what she was due,” it appears the daughter wishes he had a lifetime supplies of time that she could take back and give it to her mother. She makes it seem as if it would only be for her mother but from how she sounds in the poem it could be for her a lot more than her mother. A father figure is supposed to love their child, confort his child when some jerk picks on them, or go out and build their daughter a treehouse to play in. Instead it seems as if her father betrayed her and her mother by cheating on them with other woman. This makes one feel rage because it makes them feel unwanted, worthless, empty or even unloved. A father's child should not feel that way. The speaker even makes a big statement not in the poem but an observation of the poem. If one pays attention one finds that there are no capital letters. It could possibly be that it was her way of showing that her forgiveness would not be given easily or truthfully. She would always have that loss of time deep down inside. The time her father
The speaker's relationship with her husband had to go over a few changes. At first, she did not want anything to do with her husband, she was still fourteen years old consequently feeling unready on handling such a big responsibility, but she had no other choice but to stay with him as she was a part of an arranged marriage. Later on, the speaker accepts her relationship with her husband and
Because of her association with the young man, the police were planning to arrest her, but her father sold all of his worldly possessions, including his house in the city land his father had given him, and gave the money to the police in exchange for his daughter’s freedom. After fleeing from the city to the country, the girl writes a letter to her lover relating that “you must love him for this, manman says, you must. it is something you can never forget, the sacrifice he has made.” P.22. Sadly, her lover dies in route to America and she remains in Haiti bound to the sacrifice her family made to save her life. There is no freedom from oppression and suffering for the young man, no freedom from suffering and guilt for the young woman, and presumably, no freedom from poverty for her family in the years to
At the beginning of the poem, the audience is able to witness an event of a young boy asking his father for story. While the father was deemed a “sad” man, it is later shown that his sadness can be contributed to his fear of his son leaving him. The structure then correlated to the point of going into the future. The future was able to depict what would happen to the loving duo. The father's dreams would become a reality and the son's love and admiration would cease to exist as he is seen screaming at his father. Wanting nothing to do with him. The young, pure child can be seen trying to back lash at his father for acting like a “god” that he can “never disappoint.” The point of this structure was not really a means of clarification from the beginning point of view, but more as an intro to the end. The real relationship can be seen in line 20, where it is mentioned that the relationship between the father and son is “an emotional rather than logical equation.” The love between this father and son, and all its complexity has no real solution. But rather a means of love; the feelings a parent has for wanting to protect their child and the child itself wanting to be set free from their parents grasp. The structure alone is quite complex. Seeing the present time frame of the father and son
In “Late Poem to My Father” by Sharon Olds, the speaker, who is likely a stand-in for Olds herself, takes us through the relationship her father had with her grandfather. She then relates this to her relationship with her father. Starting with the title, the word “Late” could suggest that the father has died or it could suggest how she didn’t fully value her father’s love until recently. The poem is written in free verse with no particular pattern or rhyme scheme. There are no stanza breaks, but there is a lot of enjambment throughout the poem. Olds’s syntax and placement of enjambment compliments the poem the whole way through. The first word of the poem is “Suddenly”, as if she hadn’t thought of her father in a long time. The poem can be
She calls him "old lecher/old liar", which means when he was alive the father often made empty promises of false hope about mending everything, but the family could no longer wait for him (Clifton 9, 10). She wishes that her father was rich, so he would have money to pay the mother when she asks for his salary on Friday; he would be able to repay the mother all she deserved being his wife. The impatient tone is still there, but it is more mellow. Rather than expecting her father to cough up the money like before, she now wishes that he has the money. This is the turning point. In addition, the daughter explains how her father has grew up in the same circumstances, "son of a needy father,/the father of a needy son" (Clifton 12,13). She admits that her father "gave … all he had" even though it was not much (Clifton
Using a strand of harsh words including “beat,” “scraped,” “battered,” and “whiskey,” the narrator suggests an idea of a harsh relationship despite any fond memories that were discussed. If the narrator simply intended to reflect a warm commemoration, he could have used a strand of words that implied happiness or comfort. The author was clearly aware that at first glance, readers typically assume the poem is about an abusive relationship; nevertheless, he neglected to alter his poem, demonstrating the idea that negative memories of the father do exist.
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.
“Good times” by Lucille Clifton, is a short poem about a child who has a good experience with her family. Even though everything is good now there once was a point where everything wasn’t going as well. This tells the reader one should always cherish the good times because these are the times to remember. Almost the entire poem is a flashback of the “good times” the child has experienced. In lines one and two, the poet writes, “My daddy has paid the rent and the insurance man is gone” (Clifton). Tells the reader that there was a point where the rent wasn’t paid and the insurance man was trying to cut off the lights. With the authors specific use of anaphora, diction, and symbolism; the author reminds us that good times don’t last forever. When those good times happen we should appreciate them because those good times come and go. With Lucille Clifton's specific use of diction, structure and symbolism, Lucille uses her remarkable skills to create poem that lets the reader know good times don’t last forever.
She then stated that her “Children sold away from me, I’m husband sold, too.” The mood of this line is painful because as a mother you cannot conceal your pain as your children and husband are taken away from you and sold to some other place. This shows the true and deep hardships that the speaker had to go through in this overwhelming time of her life. As a result, the speaker stated that there was “no safety, no love, no respect.” You can tell that when this troubling event happened to the speaker, she knew that there was no respect for her as a women and mother. It then goes on to show that as a slave, you were treated as if you had no existence left and that they did not care if they took your most precious belongs that has sentimental values to you as a human being. But towards the middle of the poem, there was a shift in tone to a more encouraging and optimistic tone. In this case, the diction also changes in the poem to words like “torch of tomorrow”, “a road to the light”, and “out of the darkness.” By changing the diction from the beginning to the end, the speaker wants to tell the future African American Children of today that there is hope and
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
In the poem ¨My Father¨ by Scott Hightower, the author describes a rather unstable relationship with his now deceased father. Scott describes his father as a mix of both amazing and atrocious traits. The father is described as someone who constantly contradicts himself through his actions. He is never in between but either loving and heroic or cold and passive. The relationship between Scott and his father is shown to be always changing depending on the father’s mood towards him. He sees his father as the reason he now does certain things he finds bad. But at the end of it all, he owes a great deal to his father. Scott expresses that despite his flaws, his father helped shape the man he is today. Hightower uses certain diction, style, and imagery to
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
She is happy that her father had payed the rent and the insurance man stopped bothering them. Her daddy finally payed for the electricity bill and know the family get lights in their house instead of the cold darkness. Her uncle “just got hit” means that he was playing poker and he won him some money. Although there was times when she didn't have good times she is glad that time is over. The tone is she is happy that her rent is paid, insurance man is no longer bothering them, the light came, and his uncle won lottery. In lines 5-10 Lucille recounts on the time when she got to eat bread. Bread was considered a luxury and it was rare for poor classes to ever taste bread so Lucille was so excited that she gets to eat bread. She repeats “Oh the good times” because it is the time when she gets to spend time with her family, and not worry about whether to pay rent or not. In lines 10-18 she recalls her uncles celebrating with alcohol because they don't need to worry about money now. The women were making the food and singing because their mind is at ease and they don't need to worry about feeding their children because there is now bread to be eaten. In the end she fastforwords to the present and tells them the good times was when stuff was limited. Lucille tells this to teach them to live not lavishing and to know that in every good times there will always be bad times. As long as we have our family around us the pain of the bad times will be a distant
While most of us think back to memories of our childhood and our relationships with our parents, we all have what he would call defining moments in our views of motherhood or fatherhood. It is clearly evident that both Theodore Roethke and Robert Hayden have much to say about the roles of fathers in their two poems as well. While the relationships with their fathers differ somewhat, both men are thinking back to a defining moment in their childhood and remembering it with a poem. "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays" both give the reader a snapshot view of one defining moment in their childhood, and these moments speak about the way these children view their fathers. Told now years later, they understand even more about these moments.
The speaker shows how he despises his father for having these qualities and also expresses sympathy towards his mother.