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Literary analysis of poetry
Literary analysis of poetry
Analysis of poems examples
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Literary analysis of poetry
Literary analysis of poetry
Analysis of poems examples
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Not everyone has the luxury to have a traditional father and maternal figure. This book tells us the struggles of a
In addition, the daughter finds a fork in the road that she finds questioning. Towards the end of the passage, when Dad went to find the vocabulary book, the daughter thought, “Why should I eat when my own father has abandoned his own food? Nothing’s more important than his books and vocabulary words. He might say I matter, but when he goes on a scavenger hunt for a book, I realize I don’t matter” (Lopez paragraph 26). This shows that the daughter feels that her father does not care as much about her.
His daughters feel resentment towards him due to his continuous labours at sea, and his pre-occupations with escape at home. Tucked away in his room, the eldest daughter feels as if he were “never here”. The fact that this animosity exists demonstrates that the efforts made by the father were often to his detriment, and not always recognized or understood by his
The poem My Papa Waltz by the title sounds like it could be sweet and loving. The poem is actually very dark in my opinion. In the poem the father is drunk, stumbling and hurting the boy. Even though they could just be having a good time, running around, and the father could also be trying to teach the boy to grow up, I believe that the poem is about a boy being abused by his father. Because he also states that the father is so drunk that his breath could get a small boy drunk.
Meanwhile the children were naive, everything that their father would say and do they believed. The narrator and his brothers’ were filled with preconceived thoughts of their father and their family’s relationship dynamics. Their father’s abusive actions were not only towards their mother, but also directed towards them. As a child, this could have clogged up their definition of
In the poem “forgiving my father”, Lucille Clifton writes of a young daughter reminiscing about her father’s recent death. The daughter talks about it being Friday, it being payday. She discusses her father and how he owed her and her dead mother money when really they just wanted him to be present. The daughter feels she has had no time with her father and she resents him for it. He was not present in her life and now he has passed away, leaving her with a yearning for something that she will never obtain.
Every story consists of different elements, such as characters, plotlines, and settings. Nonetheless, many stories portray the same messages or ideas. “My Papa’s Waltz,” by Theodore Roethke, depicts a reckless father who is loved by his child, while “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, depicts a hardworking father whose child is indifferent to him. Though the poems depict exceptionally different childhoods, both contribute to the idea that perceptions of parents alter as one grows into adulthood. Both poems use harsh words and critical tones in order to convey this notion, however in “My Papa’s Waltz,” they signify the recklessness of the father and how the narrator perceives his father as an adult, while in “Those Winter Sundays,” they
Comparing and contrasting Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, one finds the two poems are similar with their themes of abuse, yet contrasting with how the themes are portrayed. Furthermore, the speaker 's feelings toward their fathers’ in each poem contrast. One speaker was hurt by the father and the other speaker was indifferent about how he was treated by his father. The fathers’ feelings toward the children are also different despite how each treated the child. Both poems accurately portray the parent-child relationships within an abusive home, even if they have different
The child try to teach the father waltzing but while they are doing it the father messed things up. But at the end his/her dad dances him all the way to bed, and the child still wants to cling on to the whirling, waltzing man the the child loves, doesn’t matter how much the father’s breath smells like whiskey, or how battered his knuckles may be. The father (from Grape Sherbet) made his sherbet, that masterpiece of swirled snow, gelled light. It’s a memory of a Memorial Day picnic with the speaker now realizing there was something to
The father/son relationship are shown in both poems. Both are adults reflecting on their past. “My Papa’s Waltz” is about how the father would dance daily with the son. Although it was painful when he sometimes missed a step and his “right ear scraped a buckle”, this was a memorable memory for the son (Line 8). The poem has a happy tone of the sons childhood days.
Although one may misinterpret the first paragraph, “the whiskey on your breath, could make a small boy dizzy; but I hung on like death: such waltzing was not easy” (Line 1- 4), it means that, despite the fact that the father was slightly drunk, he was capable of waltzing with his son, albeit clumsily. He was excitedly frolicking with his son and certainly not pummeling him as some readers may think. Lines in the second stanza, “we romped until the pans, slid from the kitchen shelf; my mother’s countenance, could not unfrown itself” (Line 5-8), suggests that the child was clearly enthusiastic about the waltz only to the penitence of his concerned mother. To further suggest that the poem is written as a warm nostalgic memory, the author employs a waltzing tune and
Furthermore, when his father says that “[he] was worse than the girl”, he feels incomparable. Witnessing the interaction that his father has with his daughter creates a deep desire for approval and he is forced to wonder about the other situations within his childhood in which he felt lacking. Moreover, when the narrator admits that “maybe [he] was jealous”, feelings of envy towards his daughter are created. These feelings could have a deleterious effect on their relationship and cause his daughter to desire the same feelings as he desires from his father. He finds himself comparing his interaction with his father to his daughter’s interaction.
The writer is always mentioning what all the father does for the child and the child’s family. The child’s father always woke up first and “with cracked hands that ached” went and made a fire so the child would be warm on “Those Winter Sundays.” Not only had the father “driven out the cold,” but he had also polished the child’s “good shoes.” The child never thanked the father, but instead the child spoke “indifferently” to him
According to traditional gender roles, the father is the provider for the family. He is expected to work hard to support and provide for his family’s essential needs: food, shelter, and clothing. Burdened with the responsibility of ensuring the security of the other members of his family, he is sometimes perceived as a distant and detached figure, in contrast with the stereotypical warm and nurturing image of the mother. The father 's burden is further compounded by a socially-perceived expectation that males have to be less emotional as a sign of strength of character. Robert Hayden’s sonnet “Those Winter Sundays” explores some of these dynamics by examining the emotional distance between a father and the son for whom he provides.
Growing up, the narrator experienced a fair share of time between her mother and father. She described her father as a man of few words who would only talk to her things about work during the times that she assisted him with work while her mother was the more talkative one. Her mother told her stories about her past, the parties she had attended to and the guys who had courted her. Most of the time, the narrator spent time with her father helping him do his work. But a few years later, the narrator noticed the change in their household.