The poem “First Memory”, by Louise Glück, expresses the emotions of a daughter who has never understood what loving another person consists. The somber tone of the poem conveys the reader into understanding the narrator, the daughter, and her emotions towards her father. The daughter seems to be pained by her father’s lack of affection towards her, as shown in lines six through eight “I thought that pain meant I was not loved”, in her own perspective she felt that her father had not loved her enough to cancel out the pain that he had caused. The father of the speaker is the cause of her pain because she loves him enough that she failed to realize that to love one must endure pain. Based on the diction the reader can hypothesize that the speaker is not fond of her father, as shown in line two “I lived to revenge myself against my father.”. By using the word “revenge”, …show more content…
By using allowing the poem to be in first person, the poem becomes more intimate. The author, Louise Glück, is making the speaker vulnerable because as the readers we have more insight on who the speaker is. The first person point of view allows for the speaker to present themselves as who they believe they are and it also allows them to become a person that the readers can connect with. For example, in line one they speaker says “Long ago, I was wounded.” by showing vulnerability the speaker has made a connection with the reader because she seems human and relatable. By being in the first person point of view we can also see how the daughter realized why her father is the cause of the pain she has always felt since childhood. As shown in lines five through nine, “from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant that I was not loved. It meant I loved.” the reader can see how the speaker has their grand epiphany on what unconditional love
The speaker’s personal emotions emphasizes the poem’s theme since although his father is no longer with him in this world, the memory of his father will always live in his heart. Throughout the poem, Lee uses the sky, underground, and the heart to symbolize imagination, reality, and memory—emphasizing the poem’s theme of the remembrance of a loved one. Lee also uses repetition to convey the meaning of Little Father. The speaker repeatedly mentions “I buried my father…Since then…” This repetition displays the similarity in concepts, however the contrast in ideas. The first stanza focuses on the spiritual location of the speaker’s father, the second stanza focuses on the physical location of the father, and the third stanza focuses on the mental location of the speaker’s father. This allows the reader to understand and identify the shift in ideas between each stanza, and to connect these different ideas together—leading to the message of despite where the loved one is (spiritually or physically), they’ll always be in your heart. The usage of word choice also enables the reader to read in first person—the voice of the speaker. Reading in the voice of the speaker allows the reader to see in the perspective of the speaker and to connect with the speaker—understand
The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
The poem, A Story, is written in the third person point of view. Thereby, allowing the audience to grasp onto the sentimental emotions of the father. The story begins with the depiction of the father as a “sad...man who is asked
As mentioned, the parents’ pains, negative emotions and hatred are presented in the first part. Even from the first few lines from the poem: “Ulcerated tooth keeps me...
pity in the reader by reflecting on the traumatic childhood of her father, and establishes a cause
Revenge is the opportunity to retaliate or gain satisfaction for a real or perceived slight ("revenge"). In “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, Montresor, the narrator, is out for revenge. Montressor seeks revenge against Fortunato and thinks he has developed the perfect plan for “revenge with impunity” (Baym). Montresor never tells the reader why he feels Fortunato deserves punishment. He only says that Fortunato causes him “a thousand injuries”until “[venturing] upon insult” (Baym?).
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.
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
His ungratefulness as a child has now emerged on him, leaving the speaker ashamed of taking his father’s hard work for granted. In this poem he writes, “…fearing the chronic angers of that house//Speaking indifferently to him/who had driven out the cold…” (Hayden, 17). When he quotes “fearing chronic angers”, the speaker refers to his view of life as a child, and how he interpreted his father’s agony and self-sacrifice as anger towards him. With an apathetic and cold attitude that accompanied his youth, he did not recognize the love that his father had for him. Hayden also writes, “What did I know, What did I know…” (Hayden 17). Repeating this rhetorical question twice it is obvious that the speaker, now as an adult, feels deep remorse over the way he had treated his father. With a matured mind, Hayden came to the realization that love comes in all shapes and forms, and his father’s love was shown through his selfless
While reading the poem the reader can imply that the father provides for his wife and son, but deals with the stress of having to work hard in a bad way. He may do what it takes to make sure his family is stable, but while doing so he is getting drunk and beating his son. For example, in lines 1 and 2, “The whisky on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy” symbolizes how much the father was drinking. He was drinking so much, the scent was too much to take. Lines 7 and 8, “My mother’s countenance, Could not unfrown itself.” This helps the reader understand the mother’s perspective on things. She is unhappy seeing what is going on which is why she is frowning. Although she never says anything it can be implied that because of the fact that the mother never speaks up just shows how scared she could be of her drunk husband. Lines 9 and 10, “The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle”, with this line the reader is able to see using imagery that the father is a hard worker because as said above his knuckle was battered. The reader can also take this in a different direction by saying that his hand was battered from beating his child as well. Lastly, lines 13 and 14, “You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt” As well as the quote above this quote shows that the father was beating his child with his dirty hand from all the work the father has
The little girl shook of her covers and crawled into her father's lap. He sobbed as she held him; his tears dampened the nape of her nightgown as she held him. She finished the story for him, whispering the last of it into his ear. "Because love is the only thing worth killing, and dying, for."
Through diction, the tone of the poem is developed as one that is downtrodden and regretful, while at the same time informative for those who hear her story. Phrases such as, “you are going to do bad things to children…,” “you are going to suffer… ,” and “her pitiful beautiful untouched body…” depict the tone of the speaker as desperate for wanting to stop her parents. Olds wrote many poems that contained a speaker who is contemplating the past of both her life and her parent’s life. In the poem “The Victims,” the speaker is again trying to find acceptance in the divorce and avoidance of her father, “When Mother divorced you, we were glad/ … She kicked you out, suddenly, and her/ kids loved it… ” (Olds 990). Through the remorseful and gloomy tone, we see that the speaker in both poems struggles with a relationship between her parents, and is also struggling to understand the pain of her
The use of third person omniscient point of view allows the reader to know the inner thoughts of both characters in the poem. By knowing the thoughts of the father and his son, the reader is able to see both the father’s concerned thoughts and his son’s desire for a
In the poem “Terminal Resemblance,” author, Louise Glück talks about her younger self and the complicated relationship with her father. Her father tells her that he will die soon and she does not know how to take it. Glück is not close with her father and never was before, even though he was always present in her life. When the father tries to connect with his daughter in the last conversation they have the speaker feels awkward because her father has never tried to have an emotional connection with her before so she focuses on her surroundings and notices how much life has changed while she was away. The speaker tries to focus on anything other than her father to avoid the fact that the father she was never close to is about to die.
My personal experience with revenge isn’t much, and it concerns little things. Revenge can simply be when a person draws on your book, and in spite you would draw on their book as well. It might as well occur in a game, for example my friend plays a lot of game online and this game is to simply ‘kill’ other opponents. Once, her character got attacked by another opponent but she was not prepared for the attack and she lost. Because of this, she was angry and wanted to seek revenge. She then got all her other friends to ‘gang’ up and attack the opponent. Since it wasn’t a very fair battle, the opponent lost. This act might seem childish and trivial, but this is the act of revenge.