In her poem “ My Husbands Back”, Susan Minot describes how she feels being a mother, and wife on an emotional and bad day. Minot writes this poem as the speaker and the tone is very heartfelt and sorrow at times. From the title of this poem we can gather that the poem is about a husband and wife and their relationship. “My husbands back” was actually very close to home at times in the poem and made me think about my relationship with my husband and even about my relationship growing up with my father. Minot uses line breaks, metaphors, connotation and figurative language in this poem.
In the story of “Harrison Bergeron”, George and Hazel Bergeron’s son is murdered, but because of the world they live in they cannot mourn the way normal parents might. The reader must conclude their own thoughts on what they think is right or wrong with how George and Hazel reacted to Harrison’s death. These are some things the reader must know and take into consideration to make a fair judgement of the two parents.
Sometimes it can be difficult for sons to understand the lessons that fathers teach to them, leading to a disconnect between the two. This is the case for the son and his father in David Bottoms’ “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt.” As a child, the speaker lacks appreciation for his father, yet nevertheless they share a common love. As an adult, reminiscing on his baseball experiences with his father, the son through his retrospective point of view now appreciates his father for all his father did. This poem employs diction and varying points of view to emphasize the lack of understanding between the two characters, while symbols and figurative comparisons express their mutual love; this poem analyzes the loving, yet dysfunctional relationship
Author Erica Funkhouser’s speaker, the child of the farm laborer, sets the tone in “My Father’s Lunch,” through their narrative recount of the lunch traditions set by their father preceding the end of a hard days worth of work. The lunch hour was a reward that the children anticipated; “for now he was ours” (14). The children are pleased by the felicity of the lunch, describing the “old meal / with the patina of a dream” (38-39) and describing their sensibilities as “provisional peace” (45). Overall, the tone of the poem is one of a positive element, reinforced by gratitude.
In the poem “Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer”, Mary Oliver analogizes two distinct tones.
Every so often, we take for granted those who are important in our lives. Sometimes, we can ignore those who we think will always be there. The fact it, one day, they won’t. The poem “Abuelito Who” by Sandra Cisneros and the folktale “The Old Grandfather and His Little Grandson” retold by Leo Tolstoy are two examples of this important lesson. However their different genres, change in characters, and mood give a contrasting interpretation of their essential message.
Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” are similar because they focus on the same subject. However, they differ in how the speakers’ feel about their relationship with their parent(s). In Plath’s “Daddy”, the speaker is a daughter thinking about how her father treated her. She tells about how she felt trapped by him and how she tried to ‘kill’ him, line 6 of the poem, but he dies before she has a chance. The ending of Plath’s poem implies that she got married to a man like her father. In Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, the speaker seems to be an adult reminiscing his childhood through a metaphor of a dance. The poem suggests that the boy was abused and the mother stood by without doing much about it. Three topics that
All people have their good days and bad days. In the poems “Piano” by D.H. Lawrence and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, the speaker's experience both good memories and bad. Both speakers lived a simple life but what they as a individual were going through was not so simple. The poems each show love even if it's hard to tell. In the two poems “Piano” and “Those Winter Sundays” it shows that the conflict, setting and speaker reveal their own hardships and blessings.
“My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays” describe a character who reflects on their childhood. Although they based on the same theme, the two poems have very different perspectives. “Those Winter Sundays” talks about how the son regrets for not showing his love for his father, when all his actions went unnoticed. “My Papa’s Waltz” reflects on a son 's memory with is father where his danced around the house after the father long day at work. Both poems reflect on how their fathers showed his love for his son, the time spent with their fathers, a maternal conflict, and their relationship with their father.
Kwame Dawes, an author of poems, novels, and anthologies, was born and raised in Jamaica, later moving to the States in pursuit of his current employment at the University of Nebraska. He writes mainly about the themes of ethnicity, influenced by Jamaican culture and the musician Bob Marley. “Tornado Child” contains a storm of concepts. This poem is intriguing because of its ability to draw different ideas of the theme based on the reader’s experiences and influences. What is the intended interpretation, and what could be interpreted?
Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” was a text that had a profound, illuminating, and positive impact upon me due to its use of imagery, its relevant and meaningful message, and the insightful process of preparing the poem for verbal recitation. I first read “Wild Geese” in fifth grade as part of a year-long poetry project, and although I had been exposed to poetry prior to that project, I had never before analyzed a poem in such great depth. This process of becoming intimately familiar with the poem—I can still recite most of it to this day—allowed it to have the effect it did; the more one engulfs oneself in a text, the more of an impact that text will inevitably have. “Wild Geese” was both revealing and thought-provoking: reciting it gave me
“My Father’s Song” describes the close, tender relationship between a father and his son, while “Those Winter Sundays” depicts a more distant, strained relationship between the father and his family. Ortiz’s lively descriptions of pleasant memories, illustrate how the father’s interactions with his son reveal his love and strengthen their relationship. A darker, emotionless tone fills Hayden’s poem as he emphasizes a father’s austere, yet sacrificial love toward his family. These poems both set different examples of how some families choose live out the bond between one
Carol Ann Duffy in her poem Originally explores the themes of growing up, loneliness and isolation through her use of mood, imagery and contrast. To pin down to a central theme, loss of identity can be observed. As the title suggests, the poet tries to discover her originality or identity by exploring the factors which affect it. Identity can not only be shaped and defined by the environment but also can be affected by the dialect and culture.
In Spoon River Anthology, Masters uses colloquial diction and free verse to portray the lives of the lay-people that once lived in a fictional town near the Spoon River. The poems are significant because they are in the form of epitaphs that uncover truths often hid from view in small town life. The epitaphs are individually significant in that they contain irony that accompanies the colloquial, small town diction. In the epitaph of “Elsa Wertman,” Masters tells of a poor German girl who had an illegitimate child with a well-to-do gentleman of the small community. Ironically, her son is adopted by the wife of Thomas Greene and the boy is raised as the son of Thomas and Frances Greene, not Elsa Wertman. Ironically, the boy believes he came from
“Winter Dreams” was published in 1926. Francis Scott Fitzgerald is most well-known for his novel “The Great Gatsby”. A common theme he is known for is the American dream and how it is corrupt. Fitzgerald enjoys writing about the poor boy chasing after the rich girl. This story is about a man named Dexter Green trying to achieve the American dream by obtaining the girl he adores. By the end of the story he cannot have the girl, and his dreams are ruined. The author illustrates Dexter Green as a wishful boy longing for what the future holds. Fitzgerald incorporates many symbols as one being solely Judy Jones. The author uses style in the story by separating the story into 6 sections. Fitzgerald in “Winter Dreams” depicts the fantasy of the American dream and how no matter how hard one works he may never achieve his dream.