While I have yet to experience the thrills of fatherhood, I would be astounded to learn that the author was not a father himself. When reading this poem, I actually felt the compassion, and love, for which the author was feeling towards his daughter. In my opinion, there are actually two stories being told within this poem. The first simply being a narrative of what the author is experiencing at a certain moment of time, and the second is that of an underlying theme of love and pride that a father feels towards his daughter. The poem begins with the father listening to his daughter typing a story on her typewriter. The authors description of her typing as, “Like a chain hauled over a gunwale”, gives the reader the feeling that she is really into her work and typing with all of her might. It is clear that the daughter takes her writing seriously. The father then comments on his young daughter’s struggle through life. He states, “Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it is heavy”. While he doesn’t give details of the hardships she has incurred, it is clear that she has had some sorrow in her life. The father’s enjoyment of listening to his daughter’s labor of love is suddenly ended, upon hearing the typing cease. He states that the stoppage was,
“As if to reject my thought and its easy figure”. It’s as if his world has temporarily stopped, and he feels the pain that his daughter is feeling while looking for her next words to write. The quietness must be intense, as he states; “The whole house seems to be thinking”. And then, as quickly as the typing had stopped, it began again. At this point in the poem, the father starts to reminisce about an incident that occurred two years prior, in the very same room that his daughter is working. He tells a story of a starling, which had become trapped, inside the room. Both the father and the daughter watched as the bird struggled to find its way out of the room. The details given by the author, give an image of a beautiful bird that is fighting for its life, to get back to it’s comfort zone outdoors. He uses the lines, “Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top”. I see this as an analogy of his daughter battering against the keys, maybe throwing her hands to her head, and slumping over.
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
In “A Caged Bird”, it is made clear that this bird has never experienced the freedom of flying with the other species or perching atop the highest building. All it has ever known is the cage in which is has been kept and fed plentifully, yet not punctually, and nurtured with the love of an owner and proper care.
The author clearly shows how his childhood effected his adulthood, making in a living example of what he is writing about allowing the audience to more easily trust what he is writing about. Instead of using factually evidence from other dysfunctional family incidences, the author decides to make it more personal, by using his own life and comparing family ideas of the past to the present.
I have elected to analyze seven poems spoken by a child to its parent. Despite a wide variety of sentiments, all share one theme: the deep and complicated love between child and parent.
When this tale is looked at from a deeper perspective, it is learned that the mothers wish is to be loved and not have to worry about her child that has come in the way of her and her
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
Harwood wrote the poem with relatively simple composition techniques but it provides a rather big impact which helps to give an insight into the life of a mother or nurturer which bares the burdens of children.
The rifts between mothers and daughters continue to separate them, but as the daughters get older they become more tolerant of their mothers. They learn they do not know everything about their mothers, and the courage their mothers showed during their lives is astounding. As they get older they learn they do not know everything, and that their mothers can still teach them much about life. They grow closer to their mothers and learn to be proud of their heritage and their culture. They acquire the wisdom of understanding, and that is the finest feeling to have in the world.
But in this story, it embodies a theme of entrapment which was also experienced by Vanessa’s father, as mentioned above. The bird that was trapped in her window represents the trapped environment that only lead to an aimless movement. Our bodies do numerous things that we do not understand. We wonder why our body is in a certain condition, perhaps we express negativity, depression without even know it is a good idea.
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
By stating how other people behave or interact, the author offers a great chance for readers to interpret fairly for themselves what the reason for any conflict may be, or the nature of any essential contrast between the narrator and other adults in the story. In the story, there are many self-righteous opinions from people, which seem to be ironic to the readers; For example, her mother’s aggressive attitude of showing off her daughter, her piano teacher’s self-praise claiming him as “Beethoven.” All of the narrations including conversation clearly depict a different characteristic between the narrator and other people. For instance, a conversation occurs between the narrator and her mother when the mother criticizing a girl who seems similar to the author on TV which reveals dissimilar understanding for both of them to each other’s behavior. At first, the daughter speaks out for the girl by questioning her mother by saying “why picking on her […] She’s pretty good. Maybe she’s not the best, but she’s trying hard.” The daughter actually is defending for herself and reflecting that she feels uncomfortable with her mother’s disregard of her hard work. She wants to get her mother’s compliments instead of her criticisms. However, her mother response of, “just like you,” and, “not the best. Because you not trying.” Here, her mother doesn’t really answer her question, instead wants her put more effort on trying, neglecting how much she has tried before. However, in her mother’s perspective, she has never tried hard enough. By narratively stating the conversations she has encountered, readers perceive a strong implication of the reason for a future conflict between her and her mother.
Dan Brown rightly said that no love is greater than that of a father and a son. It’s not just flesh and mind but the hearts that connect a father and a son. “My papa’s Waltz”, by Theodore Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays”, by Robert Hayden, both describe the relationship between a father and a son. These poems share a common idea of revealing the relationship that the speakers share with their fathers and the poems simultaneously, offer a means of discovering and interpreting the setting, tone and theme among other elemental aspects of poetry. The poems seem a lot different, however they are alike in many significant ways. Both the poems swing around the different childhood memories of the speakers, yet show how love crosses all the borders of bitterness.
The relationship between a father and his son can be articulated as without a doubt the most significant relationship that a man can have throughout the duration of his life. To a further extent the relationship between a father and a son can be more than just a simple companionship. Just like a clown fish and a sea anemone, both father and son will rely on each other in order to survive the struggles of their everyday lives. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Gabriele Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness both depict a story between a father and son using each other as a means of survival when faced with adversity. When placed in a tough situation father and son must create a symbiotic relationship in order to survive. Upon the duo of father and son can creating a symbiotic relationship, it will result in a mutual dependency on each other. This theme of paternal love is omnipresent given the bond between the two characters.