Childhood And History Lesson Analysis

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The poems Childhood, by Margaret Walker, Father, by Edgar Albert Guest, and History Lesson,by Natasha Trethewey, all contain a similar aspect, which is that the narrators are looking back on parts of their childhood and remembering how their lives were never perfect. Childhood’s narrator looks back on a past where everyone around them was poor and generally had to mine to survive. We know this because of the first 6 lines, talking about the red miners. We also know that it was a rural area, given the 7th and 8th lines. Such a past seems pretty bleak for everyone who lived there. Moving on, the narrator of Father looks back upon a time where his father did absolutely nothing except speculate and tell people what to do. Given how the poem indicates