Perseverance In The Red Palm And The Onset

Perseverance is something that we all struggle to maintain throughout our journey in life where at times we want to give up. The use of poetry is a vessel in which we are able to explore the themes of life. Two poems that explore perseverance are: “The Red Palm”, by Gary Soto and “The Onset”, by Robert Fost. Soto’s poem is about a cotton field worker who works tirelessly to provide food and shelter for his family. Fost’s poem is about being in the woods during the snowy winter, where he realized that he hasn’t accomplished as much as he would have wanted in life, and the change of the season to spring where he watched the snow turn into a stream of water. Although the content of the poems are totally different they still share the same theme

In “The Onset” Fost uses imagery to paint a vivid picture of change he says, “always the same, when on a fated night at last the gathered snow lets down as white as may be in dark woods, and with a song it shall not make again all winter long…And I shall see the snow all go down hill in water of a slender April rill”. The description of the snow melting and turning into a small river is implying that the dark times of the winter have been washed away, and replaced with refreshing working that will nurture and develop new things. This image of snow transitioning into water was necessary to present the importance of staying determined knowing that the struggle will come to an end if you keep working hard. The transition in the water may be described as Soto’s abandoned

Soto uses a typical work day of a cotton field worker to display the setting, he says, “you chop, step, and by the end of the first row, you can buy one splendid fish for your wife and three son’s. Another row, another fish, until you have enough and move on to the milk, bread, meat”. Being at a job where you are literally count the things that you need to do in order to determine if you have done enough to provide food for your family is ultimately used as motivation, which gives a person the will power to continue on. Also, although the work may seem hard and tiresome, there is the reward at the end of the hard work that has been