To A Daughter Leaving Home Essay

Ever wondered what the term ‘night’ symbolized in literature? Authors more often than not use hidden objects or symbols to convey deeper ideas or qualities. The use of these symbols is extremely important in literature because it builds the meaning to be more personal and enjoyable to the reader. The poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home,” by Linda Pastan has numerous symbolic meanings that make this poem so relatable to readers’ lives. In the poem the author uses different symbols to illustrate emotion, parts of life, and points of view so that the reader can fully understand the message of the poem.
With this in mind, one of the types of themes the majority of authors focus on using is that of emotion. Linda Pastan uses a couple of emotional symbols in her poem to focus on the emotions of the parent and the child. In the poem the lines, “I kept waiting for the thud of your crash,” and the phrase “like a handkerchief waving goodbye,” are symbols of a parent panicking that their child might fall as they’re left behind

Most writers will use this type of symbolism to develop a second meaning within a work of writing by showing how one character’s point of view is completely different than the tone of the whole piece of literature. Linda Pastan uses two lines in her poem to show how the parent views this moment of the daughter riding the bike. “I sprinted to catch up while you grew more breakable, with distance, pumping, pumping for your life, screaming with laughter,” is a section of the poem that shows how this parent believes the further the child goes away the more fragile they become while the child doesn’t even realize what could be in their path (737). However, the Child’s point of view is completely different in that they are “screaming with laughter,” which symbolized she was carefree and happy