Pomegranate Eavan Boland

851 Words2 Pages

In a certain period of life, growing child leaves his parents, turning his home’s safety for the uncertainty, and the life stability for hardship. Although a young person wants to have a good relationship with his parents, he also wants to be himself, and emphasize his individuality and autonomy. “Pomegranate,” a poem by Eavan Boland, draws on the Greek myth “Demeter and Persephone” to illustrates the influence of inevitable changes in human development on relationship between mother and daughter, and periodicity of human existence. To express her feelings, Bolan draws on the motifs of the myth “Demeter ( Ceres) and Persephone’, which refers to the emotion of all mothers. Boland compares her concerns and feelings to struggles of the …show more content…

In the first two lines of the poem “[t]he only legend I have ever loved/ is the story of a daughter lost in hell”, Boland recalls her own experience as a young person who had to move from Ireland to England. The author identifies herself with Persephone. She fell lost and confused in a “city of fogs and strange consonants” (ln 9), and fell as “an exiled child in the crackling dusk/ of the underworld”(ln 11,12). This unpleasant experience from her early childhood is still present in her mind , therefore she “[could] enter it anywhere”(ln. 7). However, when Boland grew up, she walked out of the “ crackling dusk” into the “summer twilight” ( ln. 11,13) as Ceres, the mother, who tries to protect her daughter from the threats that lurk in the surrounding world. The author has some life knowledge and legitimate concerns, therefore she wants “to make any bargain to keep her” (ln. 16) and protect from the loss that has to come “I knew/ winter was in store of every leaf/ on every tree on that road.” ( ln. 19-21). Winter, as a cold season, indicates changes in mother daughter relationship and these changes “[are] inescapable for each one we passed./ And for me.” ( …show more content…

The pomegranate, a symbol of adulthood, can also be a source of pleasure, curiosity, and fulfillment. Like Persephone who finally come to love Hades, her daughter also can eventually find her way in the adulthood. The mother knows that “if [she] defer the grief, [she will] diminish the gift” (ln. 49). Therefore, Boland “will say nothing” because the loss of innocence is an inevitable part of the cyclical nature of human life. Everyone has his own role to fulfill in life, and his own contribution to “the legend [that] will be hers as well as mine” (ln 50). Boland knows that her daughter will finally grow up and become a mother, and she will have to go through the same struggles as the author and the mythical Ceres, because the wheel of the human existence will have to reach his next

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