ipl-logo

In The Park By Gwen Harwood Essay

842 Words4 Pages

The poem that will be analysed is ‘In the Park’ written by Gwen Harwood. It was published in 1963, a time where it was normal for women to have children and stay home. The poem represents the ideas of memory, entrapment and loss of identity which is commonly held amongst mothers in today’s society.

Gwen Harwood was an Australian poet born in Taringa, Queensland on June 8, 1920. As a child Harwood was immersed in music, philosophy, language and religion and was introduced to poetry by her grandmother. She was born into a family of strong women that highly supported feminism and “always felt part of a long chain of independent women”. Harwood grew up in a world where men were dominant in which influenced her to publish her poems under male pseudonym. If she published the poems under ‘Gwen Harwood’ they would get rejected as a female has written it, so using a false name overtime she could publish as much …show more content…

Sonnets are commonly used for ‘love’ poems whereas ‘In the park’ is the exact opposite to that. In the first stanza we are introduced to an unknown woman sitting in park with her three children. Harwood has described the children as “two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt. A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt.” The technique of irony is used in this quote as she is referring the phrase ‘aimless patterns’ to her life. In my visual, I have incorporated black silhouettes of the characters in the poem as they are unknown and we are only being told that a mother is being destroyed by the birth of her three children. “Someone she loved once passed by- too late” this quote says how she has changed to someone who only lives because of her children. Her ex- boyfriend has been lost amongst her role as a mother and she has become some different until she meets a past lover. The theme ‘loss of identity’ is explored in this stanza because this unknown woman doesn’t know who she is anymore or how to think about being a

Show More
Related
1274 Words | 6 Pages

The essence of great poetry lies with the author’s ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Most poets use universal themes to connect their audience through emotion and experience, making the written theme relatable. But it is only when combined with the use of carefully placed literary techniques that this connection is enhanced and the work transforms from simple words on paper to an art form. Gwen Harwood uses a number of her poems to connect us with the universal journey from childhood innocence to experience and adulthood. Harwood also weaves the idea of memory into her writing, as a way to trigger emotion through a connection to the past, a connection to feelings that transcend through time.

Read More
1833 Words | 8 Pages

The conflicting interests of the mother and the father result in a situation where one must make a sacrifice in order to preserve the connection in the family. The flat depressed tone of the poem reflects the mother’s unhappiness and frustration about having to constantly

Read More
1380 Words | 6 Pages

Both “In the Park” and “Suburban Sonnet” express the frustrations of women who feel as if they are trapped by motherhood and their placing in the traditional lifestyle for their gender. As it is a main aspect of patriarchal society for men to have the vast majority of dominance and power due to their somewhat stronger emotional and physical characteristics, women were forced to forget all aspects of their lives and only focus on certain roles. In her writing titled “In The Park,” domestic life is addressed as the woman takes her children to the park and encounters an ex-lover. The superficial conversation that is undergone suggests the significant difference between a man and woman, as she is tied down to her children whom have consumed her in comparison to the man who appears to have a huge amount of freedom “to the wind she says, they have eaten me alive.” This controlling ideology challenges the traditional values explored and positions the reader to accept these by the way the mother’s regret is conveyed, showing how males were completely unaware of the sacrifices undergone during motherhood.

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

For the entire duration of the poem, the reader is able to infer how the complexity of the relationship changes and how the father feels about his son through the techniques and methods stated above. Within A Story, Lee uses point of view from both characters to convey the idea that the father’s relationship with his son is indeed, increasingly complex. The reader also learns from this point of view technique that the time of thought within the poem constantly changes. The boy’s young age is shown clearly in the beginning of the poem as: “His five-year-old son waits in his lap.”

Read More
427 Words | 2 Pages

Harwood setting of the park is a symbol of freedom, but the woman couldn’t move forward to the freedom as her children “tug at her skirt” bringing her down. The inevitable change draw attention to Harwood’s readers, that the change of being a mother isn’t always easy,

Read More
935 Words | 4 Pages

When Poe’s speaker states,” For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee,” he demonstrates that he obsesses over his late lover even after her death. Likewise to a child, the speaker struggles with understanding the harsh reality of death. By expressing that there is not a day that goes by without the speaker thinking of Annabel Lee he demonstrates that he is still not at peace with her passing. The speaker does not possess that maturity to move past the situation and constantly lives in agony reliving the loss of Annabel Lee. In the same way, when Hurst’s speaker states, “I remember doodle,” he demonstrates that he thinks of his brother after he died.

Read More
1232 Words | 5 Pages

Standing one’s ground is important to maintain pride in oneself and one’s family. It could involve doing something one may not want to do or require the gathering of courage, but to keep one’s integrity, one must face their conflicts head-on and figure it out. This idea is challenged in “Sunday at the Park” by Bel Kaufman in a conflict involving a couple and their child versus a grown-up bully and his child. Morton must muster the courage to challenge the bully when a problem arises, and in the end, he is unable to. The idea of defending himself and his family against a bully is central to the story.

Read More
251 Words | 2 Pages

This is an important role of poetry because everyone loses something precious to them at some point in their life. Her next example talks of a person who can receive

Read More
1262 Words | 6 Pages

In the poem we are introduced to a young girl who apparently lives a privileged life when she refers to the poor kids as “the charity children (7).” The first line “I've stayed in the front yard all my life,” serves as a double entendre for limitation or restriction and the class system, as she mentions in line two that she wants a “peek at the back.” It is apparent that she wants to experience freedom. As the poem progresses the reader is made aware that her mother does not agree with her daughter going to play in the alley with the other children because she doesn't want her daughter associating with them (5-14). As the poem draws to an end the speaker says that she wants to be like Johnnie Mae, the girl who her mother dislikes and says that will grow up to be a bad woman.

Read More
1065 Words | 5 Pages

In the Park Being a parent is a very stressful and difficult job, the reason is because when it comes to being a parent a child’s needs comes before anything else. In the poem “In the Park,” Gwen Hardwood discusses the feelings involved with raising children. The speaker in the poem has feelings of regret and sadness as she thinks of what her life could’ve been if she never had children. The poem speaks to people because it makes people who had mothers wonder whether their mothers thought like this and it makes parents in the same situation feel exactly how the speaker is feeling.

Read More
1125 Words | 5 Pages

Harwood therefore uses the poem as a social commentary on 1950’s Australia. Through figurative language, she shows a dark side to motherhood and how the repetitive and mundane lifestyle can be exhausting. The line “hatred forks between my child and me” shows that the persona is an honest reflection on how ultimately, a mother can resent her children at times. Harwood therefore uses the rhythm of her ‘vengeances’ to form the final couplet in each of her stanza’s which stress that they are related humorously. The quote “inside my smile a monster grins, and sticks her image through with pins.” contains a child like rhyme that contrasts against the dark statements suggesting that the humorous exaggerations could be the persona’s way of dealing with her own confinement.

Read More
838 Words | 4 Pages

She addresses her father as “daddy” like a little kid, speaks in a child-like abrupt manner, and begins the poem with “you do not do/you do not do/ anymore black shoe,” lines that resemble the old nursery rhyme “There is an old woman who lived in a shoe”. However, this is not a happy child, but one with frustration and unresolved conflicts with her father, as she calls him “evil” and a “bastard”. Furthermore, the way an adult woman completely turns into her childhood self suggests an obsession and a fixation within the past, a phenomenon commonly associated with psychological deficiencies stemming from unsolved childhood issues. These observations correspond to how the speaker metaphorically refers to her father as a “black shoe” that she had to live in, showing her inability to overcome the shadow of her late father. Thus, by addressing him directly instead of referring to him in the past tense, the speaker confronts her obsession and tries to escape the

Read More
1215 Words | 5 Pages

The poem begins with the speaker looking at a photograph of herself on a beach where the “sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” (Trethewey l. 5-7). The beach is an area where two separate elements meet, earth and water, which can represent the separation of the different races that is described during the time that her grandmother was alive and it can also represent the two races that are able to live in harmony in the present day. The clothing that the two women wear not only represent how people dressed during the different time periods, but in both the photographs of the speaker and her grandmother, they are seen standing in a superman-like pose with their hands on “flowered hips” (Trethewey l. 3,16). The flowers on the “bright bikini” (Trethewey l. 4) are used to represent the death of segregation, similar to how one would put flowers on a loved one’s grave, and on the “cotton meal sack dress” (Trethewey l. 17) it is used to symbolize love and peace in a troubled society.

Read More
1056 Words | 5 Pages

This image seems at first cold, but it is a realistic judgment of her ideas of parenthood. The feeling of distance is also shown in: “I’m not more your mother than the cloud that distils as mirror to reflect its own slow effacement at the wind’s hoard.” The final lines of the poem present the reassuring vision of a loving mother attending to her baby's needs. Plath’s self-image – ‘cow-heavy and floral in my Victorian nightgown’ – is self-deprecating and realistic. The final image is an optimistic one.

Read More
711 Words | 3 Pages

Cody Palladino Professor Regis English 113 6 February 2016 Observation essay: Public Park Many people have different views and opinions in the world living today. There is one place like nowhere else where people are aiming toward a certain goal of relaxation. The park where people can completely relax doing common interest.

Read More

More about In The Park By Gwen Harwood Essay

Related Topics

Open Document