Analysis Of To A Daughter Leaving Home By Linda Pastan

Pastan jumps immediately to the past, the mother, telling the story of her daughter leaving home for the first time. The poem, in its entirety, is in past tense, “When I taught you / at eight to ride / a bicycle…” (1-3). Taught, being the past tense of teach in this portion of the poem, tells the reader that the mother is reflecting on the time she taught her daughter to ride her bicycle. The gap in time is ultimately created by the title, “To a Daughter Leaving Home.” The present time is the daughter leaving home again. The gap in time creates a reflection from when the daughter was eight-years-old to the present time. This flashback, created by Pastan, is guiding the reader to think that as the daughter is preparing to leave, the mother is having similar feelings as the first time her daughter

“To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan describes how emotional any parent would be when their child moving away. The poem seems to be a metaphor to real life. The title is dedicated to a daughter leaving home. The voice of the poem is a parent, who thinks of the wonderful moments as watching their child growing up into a mature, independent young lady. The parent is also concern about their little girl not knowing how dangerous the world can be.

Linda Pastan’s poem, “For a Daughter Leaving Home,” displays how a parent views the life of his or her daughter by relating it to their daughter’s first bicycle ride. Her bicycle ride represents the difficult and stressful journey that the girl has embarked on throughout her life. Although the girl is now grown up and ready to start a life of her own, her parent is recalling everything about the girl’s life up to this point.

Banjo also uses imagery. Imagery is words or phrases that appeal to any sense or any combination of senses. This allows the readers mind to create a clear word picture, it builds up emotion, as the reader gets more engrossed and it also develops a theme. In the poem, Bulga Bills Bicycle uses imagery many times. One example in the first stanza fourth line is as follows:

The poet also uses metaphors to help with the theme of the poem as well as similes to express the theme throughout the poem. The poem is very confronting to the topic of child abuse and how it usually

The “The Leaving” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly is a poem that depicts a young girl whose actions are influenced by a challenge insinuated by her father. The girl competes with the physical limitations her father placed on her in order to prove her worth to him and to herself. She exclaims, “My father said I could not do it, but all night I

Few relationships are as deep as those between child and parent. While circumstance and biology can shape the exact nature of the bond, a child’s caretaker is the first to introduce them to the world. And as they grow and begin to branch out, children look to their parents as a model for how to interact with the various new situations. Through allusion, potent imagery, and nostalgic diction, Natasha Trethewey constructs an idolized image of a father guiding their child through life’s challenges only to convey the speaker’s despair when they are faced with their father’s mortality in “Mythmaker.”

Miss Rosa describes her niece, Judith Sutpen, as "a woman more strange to me than to any grief for being so less its partner" (120). Judith is a woman well-acquainted with suffering, losing first her mother, then her fiancé at the hand of her brother, and finally her father. She watches her family 's wealth disintegrate as a result of the heavy toll exacted by the Civil War, and eventually becomes accustomed to tending her own garden, spinning her own thread, and weaving her own cloth as the poor would do (125), since the Reconstruction Era showed no discrimination in turning both wealthy and impoverished Southerners into "the poor." Once her childhood has come to a close and the era of desolation has set in, during which she is forced to cope with hardship after hardship, Faulkner begins to consistently portray her as wearing a worn, discolored homemade dress of calico or gingham (plain-woven cotton fabrics). In one sense this represents the poverty that is laying waste to the South and the Sutpen family, but on a deeper level the dress comes to symbolize the deprivation and sorrow which Judith has endured, and specifically her inability or perhaps refusal to emote in response to these tragedies.

The contextual research of Shel Silverstein helped me to understand why Silverstein wrote such a book. His father was not a positive parental figure in his life, while his own daughter who he did not spend too much time with, died at the age of 11. His regrets and sadness for not being there for his child seem to shine through his sad ending of a child and parent relationship. The poem reminded me of the novel “Keep Holding On” as it also features a single mother who makes multiple sacrifices to keep her daughter healthy, but she is taken for granted by her daughter who is bullied due to her lack of clothing etc. The connection helps me to understand how society, who wishes Noelle to look a certain way, changed Noelle’s outlook on her mother.

Ricki Lake once said, “Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing.” A mother giving birth to her child is the greatest thing. A mother letting go of her child is the hardest thing. In the two poems, “Mother of the Groom” by Seamus Heany and “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan, the readers are able to understand the emotions of how a mother feels for either her daughter or son leaving. Seamus Heany wrote the poem, “Mother of the Groom” in 1966. This poem is about the grief and sorrow a mother encounters when her son is getting married. It’s like she’s losing her son to marriage. The tone throughout the poem explains how the mother does not want the son to leave her. Linda Pastan wrote, “To a Daughter Leaving Home” in 1988. This poem was bittersweet and emotional. The poem starts off by teaching the daughter how to ride a bike and then it discusses watching the daughter ride off. Both poems show love and affection towards children. They both inspire parents to

Metaphors greatly enhance poetry by allowing the reader to open up his or her mind to discover and explore the hidden meanings behind certain phrases. This style of writing is what encourages critical thinking when analyzing a poem. I prefer this method because I enjoy deciphering the encrypted messages within the lines of poetry. We use figures of speech in our everyday lives without even noticing them. One of the more common metaphors used for example is “letting the cat out of the bag.” This line would make no sense if it didn’t have any kind of metaphorical meaning behind it. The use of metaphors is a creative way to say what you are trying to say without actually saying it. They also allow us to describe things in ways that we normally

Linda Pastan describes the first time a mother realizes her child is growing up. Time seems to go faster the older you get and even though the child in the poem is only eight her mother already feels that she is leaving her. Children start to get their independence when they first go to school, but even then they still need their parents, In "To a Daughter Leaving Home" the mother starts to realize her daughter is growing up will no longer need her like she did before. "I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up" is a way for the mother to tell her daughter that she understands that she no longer needs to be there all the time. This is the first time her daughter is able to go away without her because she can peddle

For example, the use of a metaphor in the third stanza compares the worn out feeling “the girlchild” has on life to a worn out fan belt. The author uses a fan belt as an example of life because, typically, fan belts wear out. Another example is the title itself. The Barbie Doll is the classic example of the timeless beauty and the perfect body. The author is stating how the “girlchild” is made fun of for her great big fat nose and fat legs, which she developed after the change of puberty. The focus in each ending line of the stanza makes the reader judge the “girlchild” for her looks rather than how intelligent and strong she is on the inside. By having the visual judgement shows just how people in the society view people and it is not about what is inside a person. In the last stanza, the author describes the funeral, and how beautiful she looks with make-up, putty nose, and dressed in pink and white, symbolizing feminine purity. Once, the reader sees the sarcastic tone in the end you will see how she finally never settled in with her own skin by stating, Consummation at last / to every woman a happy ending

Poetry is a beautiful form of art. It can be written in many different fashions. The author of the poem can choose to take it towards any direction they want to. The types of themes and phrases used in the poem are the backbone of it. One of my favorite literary devices used in poetry is metaphors. Metaphors are one of the best literary devices to be put into a poem. Many poetry writers use metaphors. Modern poets have an interested in the relationship of mind and matter so they use metaphors in their writings to help fill in the gap between them (Getz). The famous poet John Donne is known for using them throughout his writings. He used them so often I think he tries to break his previous record of how many metaphors can I pack into one poem every time he wrote a new one. If that is not the case then he must have had some sort of bet going on. Half of the words that come out of my mouth construct a metaphor but there is no way I could keep up with Donne’s talent of turning almost into a metaphor

When Lilian went to the meadow all she thought about was her parents. She missed them so much. When her mom and dad died, she had to live with her grandma. After one hour at the meadow, every day, her grandma would yell ¨Oh sweet Lilian, time to come home for supper!”