The Pomegranate By Eavan Boland Summary

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In “The Pomegranate”, Eavan Boland uses mythical allusion to parallel her and her daughter’s experiences to those of Persephone and Ceres. With this figurative device, Boland creates a more powerful and meaningful poem that describes the complex relationship between mothers and daughters. This allusion also shows the transition from innocence to adulthood for young girls. For the majority of the poem, Boland uses fairly simple and straightforward language. In the first stanza, Boland opens with describing the basic story of the myth of Persephone. Towards the second stanza, she begins to allude to an everyday scene to make the myth and setting seem more relatable for the reader. For example, in lines 25-29, she transitions from describing …show more content…

As a child, one can identify with Persephone’s feelings of being lost and afraid; as an adult and mother, one can identify with Ceres’ grief at losing her daughter. In the second stanza, the poem shifts to a more concrete situation involving the speaker’s daughter. Boland is recalling her daughter as young and on the verge of becoming an adult. The pomegranate on her daughter’s plate represents the loss of innocence and the fact that she will soon leave her family, which can be likened to the loss of Persephone from Ceres. After describing the scene of her daughter with the pomegranate, she moves on to debating whether she should protect her daughter from the loss of innocence. Lines 43-55 portray her mental struggle: “I could warn her. There is still a chance/…It is another world. But what else/ can a mother give her daughter but such/ beautiful rifts in time?” Her mental reasoning ultimately concludes that adulthood, while sad for the mother, is precious and is what her daughter deserves. “If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift. The legend will be hers as well as mine./ She will enter it. As I have./ She will wake up. She will hold/ the papery flushed skin in her hand./ And to her lips. I will say nothing.” (lines

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