In the poem ‘Moon’, Kathleen Jamie explores themes of abandonment, loneliness and disconnection. She does this by utilizing a clearly dysfunctional relationship between a mother and child. The child replaces the either mentally or physically absent mother with the presence of the moon. To explore the emotional distance between child and mother, the author uses dark and light imagery to empathize the child’s loneliness and to evoke the scene of a parent visiting they child late at night. Personification of inanimate objects illustrates the detrimental effects the unavailable mother has on the child’s mental wellbeing. The poem ends with dialogue from the protagonist, the child, pointing out that the moon is not her mother, as if to be …show more content…
However before the moon was described as bringing light into the child’s room. This contrast perhaps highlights the negative emotions that everyone must ‘carry’, despite the positive, good emotions, creating a balance. Also, by describing the moon as a traveller highlights the potentially infrequent ‘visits’ of the child’s mother, in contrast to most mothers who are a constant part of their child’s life. In the third stanza there is heavy personification of the objects in her room and the moon. The room ‘it seemed, had missed her’ (10), by bringing inanimate objects to life the author draws parallels to the child missing her parent silently, silent like the items in her room. The moon has also begun to become characterized and has been framed as inconsiderate, ‘she pretended an interest in the bookcase’. This metaphor conveys how the child feels: overlooked, as if items in her room are more fascinating. Enjambment connects the third and fourth stanza together, the enjambment reinforcing the disconnection felt by the child between them and their parent. A detailed description of the items in the room has been given, highlighting the ignored person, who is second place to anything else in her room. The words used have connotations of sea life, in particular a fish bowl, ‘as in a rock pool’ (13), ‘green bowl gleamed’ (15). This imagery illustrates the feeling of isolation, as rock pools and fish bowls are confined spaces
In Father and Child, as the persona moves on from childhood, her father becomes elderly and is entertained by simple things in nature, “birds, flowers, shivery-grass.” These symbols of nature remind the persona of the inconsistency of life and the certainty of death, “sunset exalts its known symbols of transience,” where sunset represents time. Both poems are indicative of the impermanence of life and that the persona has managed to mature and grow beyond the initial fearlessness of childhood moving onto a sophisticated understanding of death.
Since the moon is the polar opposite of the sun we can say that, in the human element of the story there is Grandma Luna which is currently at the ending of her “moon life” and at the beginning of her rebirth towards a new day as the “sun”, the light bulb, as a symbol of rebirth representing the sun, appears one more time in the story, where in the wake of her Grandmothers death, the narrator is watching the moths “fluttering to light”, carrying her Grandmother’s soul to a place were it can become reborn. I believe that the author’s carefully chosen name of “Luna” for the Grandmother was in fact to show the reader that our death is inevitable but our rebirth in terms of happiness is changeable.
The moon has now become ominous as it forewarns of the child’s death. Spanish culture is once again brought into the poem as the moon becomes deathly. The moon has always been a figure of death in Spanish history and continues to be represented in that matter by this poem. The moon’s sensual appeal balances its foreboding nature. The boy is enticed by the mystery of the moon and does not heed her warning. Once again the boy warns the moon, “flee, moon, moon, moon” (17), as he shows his continued persistence to save the moon he has been draw into. He warns that the gypsies are coming, but the moon will not leave its dance. The moon says, “young boy, leave me, don’t step on / my starched whiteness” (19-20). This shows her lack of concern for the boy, which exemplifies her task to only attract him to her. Her starched whiteness once again contradicts her true mission to lead him to his demise. “Beating the drum of the plain” (22) stresses the intensity of the moment leading up to the point that “within the forge the young man has closed eyes” (23).
In the poem, “Insomnia” by Elizabeth Bishop, the speaker discusses her feelings and experiences of restlessness and loneliness during the night, instigated by her lover’s unrequited love. The poem explores the parallel between the speaker and the moon through their shared dissatisfaction with themselves and the speaker’s aspiration to achieve the strength of the moon. In the poem, the speaker recognizes her paralysis in her feminine role and conveys her desire to escape from the realities of a patriarchal society toward an inverted fantastical reality.
In this poem, symbolism is used to help reader’s find deeper meaning in the little things included and show that everything comes back to the father’s fear of the child he adores growing older and more independent. “In a room full of books in a world of stories, he can recall not one, and soon he thinks the boy will give up on his father.” This sentence makes a reader assume that the story the five year old so
The fact that enjambment is used throughout the poem such as in the lines, “like a colour slide or press an ear against its hive” portrays a lack of structure and therefore emphasizes the initial enjoyment one feels when reading a poem before the chore of analyzing it begins. This is also emphasized through the fact that the poem is a free verse poem.
With no way of showing her feelings and no way of escape, the narrator controls her disappointment and her rage eventually giving way to insanity. The nursery, another important symbol, was decorated with “rings and things.”(Gilman 474). This was the room she was confined in. This room was possibly used to represent the way nineteenth-century people viewed women, as children. The nursery contained barred windows which could be viewed as the emotional, social, and intellectual prison women of that era were kept in. “At night the pattern in the paper becomes clearly bars, like the bars on the windows, and the woman in the wallpaper becomes plainly visible, imprisoned behind the bars at night, just as the young woman imagining her feels imprisoned.” (Kivo 51).
Gwen Harwood’s, ‘Father and child’, is a two-part poem that tempers a child’s naivety to her matured, grown up attitude. Barn Owl presents a threshold in which the responder is able to witness the initiation of Gwen’s transition. The transformation is achieved through her didactical quest for wisdom, lead by her childhood naivety and is complimented through ‘nightfall’, where we see her fully maturate state. The importance of familial relationship and parental guidance is explored in father and child, as well as the contrasting views on mortality and death. Barn Owl depicts death as a shocking and violent occurrence while the second poem, nightfall, displays that death can be accepted, describing the cyclical and
The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.
The early learning processes of the young are potrayed more adequately in the poem Father and Child where an older child, this time a girl at a rebellious age, experiments with the constraints of authority in an attempt to seek control for herself. This experimentation leads to an important discovery in her life; death is real and unclean. Just like The Glass Jar, the allusions to nature show the certainly of change and setting the tone for the events.
This movie tells stories of millions of Mexican people illegally immigrate to the United States. They leave their family behind in Mexico and in the hopes they can find a better life. They face challenges and obstacles as an illegal immigrates, such as poor paying jobs, legal rights, and a constant fear of getting caught and deportation.
The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.
The third stanza of the poem expresses the emotional connection between the mother and the child having grown stronger. “O node and focus of the world” (11). Her child is the center of her world. This symbolizes just how important her child is to her, it was become the “focus” of her life. “I hold you deep within that well/ you shall escape and not escape-/ that mirrors still your sleeping shape;/ that nurtures still your crescent cell” (12-13). The “well” represents the woman’s womb that molds and “nurtures” that child while it sleeps. The part that speaks about the child escaping refers to the child no longer being inside of the mother yet always being a part of her. The mother will always have an emotional connection to her child.
An analysis of poems discussing the different ideas of infancy and what infancy and childhood means to different people. The ideas of infancy vary across the poems from being a curse to the family to being a blessing from the heavens or even a key to break out of the boundaries set by reality. The poets use various literary devices such as metaphors, similes and different poem structure to convey the message that they carry. Each poem has its own viewpoint on infancy. On the whole four of the poems, “Infant Joy” –William Blake, “You’re” – Sylvia Plath, “Once upon a time” – Gabriel Okara and “Piano” by D.H. Lawrence all have a more positive view towards infancy whereas, “ Infant Sorrow” – William Blake and “Prayer before birth” – Louis MacNeice show a more pessimistic side towards infancy. Despite the fact that each poem has its own different point of view on the subject of infancy, they all seem to share one thought which is the fact that infancy represents innocence and in some cases a fresh start.
20). In the fifth stanza, she fulfills every child’s dream of the parent’s constant attention by sleeping “in the cornucopia / of your left ear, out of the wind” (C. 21), safely surrounded by and encompassing his interest. This is, of course, undercut by the fact that it is not her father’s ear or attention at all, but an inanimate statue symbolizing frightening impermanence. The poem begins and ends with the recognition that what is lost is truly lost. She begins prophetically, “I shall never get you put together entirely”. Ending nestled in his ear, she seeks solace in the pattern of colored stars, knowing that she must find fulfillment in the world immediately around her, by “no longer….listen[ing] for the scrape of a keel on the blank stones of landing”(C. 21).