Coming Of Age In Li-Young Lee

One of the most difficult, yet rewarding roles is that of a parent. The relationship between and parent and child is so complex and important that a parents relationship with her/his child can affect the relationship that the child has with his/her friends and lovers. A child will watch their parents and use them as role models and in turn project what the child has learned into all of the relationship that he child will have. The way a parent interacts with his/her child has a huge impact on the child’s social and emotional development. Such cases of parent and child relationships are presented in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”. While Roethke and Plath both write about a dynamic between a child-father relationship that seems unhealthy and abusive, Plath writes about a complex and tense child-father relationship in which the child hates her father, whereas Roethke writes about a complex and more relaxed child-father relationship in which the son loves his father. Through the use of tone, rhyme, meter, and imagery, both poems illustrate different child-father relationships in which each child has a different set of feelings toward their father.

The tone of the poem changes as the poem progresses. The poem begins with energetic language like “full of heroic tales” and “by a mere swing to his shoulder”. The composer also uses hyperboles like “My father began as a god” and “lifted me to heaven”. The use of this positive language indicates to the responder that the composer is longing for those days – he is nostalgic. It also highlights the perspective of a typical child. The language used in the middle of the poem is highly critical of his father: “A foolish small old man”. This highlights the perspective of a typical teenager and signifies that they have generally conflicting views. The language used in the last section of the poem is more loving and emotional than the rest: “...revealing virtues such as honesty, generosity, integrity”. This draws attention to a mature adult’s perspective.

The first passage reveals the parallel suffering occurring in the lives of different members of the family, which emphasizes the echoes between the sufferings of the father and the narrator. The narrator’s father’s despair over having watched

The most complex relationship one could ever try to understand is the relationship of a child and his or her parents. In the poem, “Our Son Swears He Has 102 Gallons of Water in His Body,” by Naomi Shihab Nye, the speaker effectively portrays the damaged relationship between a child and his parents. The son in the poem believes he knows everything, and his “know-it-all” mentality is the source of the family’s troubles. Through details, imagery, and a shift in the last stanza, the speaker conveys the son’s stubbornness.

In the third stanza, the narrator is remembering some details like the broken knuckle of his father (line 10), and that his ear was scraping on his father's belt buckle (line 12). As well in the fourth stanza, the narrator mentions the dirt caked on his father's hand (line 14). These images of the son imply a hard working father who had just come home from the plant and was spending time with his little son before putting him to bed. These images also support my point of view that the author still has pleasant memories of the event, which would not be the case if there was abuse,

The son at first calls his father “baba”, a symbol of both mutual respect and a childlike viewpoint of his father, suggesting he looks up to him as a person. However, he later mockingly calls him a “god”, making fun of his so called authority as his father. Then, right at the end of the poem, he reverts back to his childish ways, calling him “baba” once more, even begging him to “please” read him another story. This shift from respect, to anger, then back to respect represents the circular nature of growing up. While one learns to rebel as they get older, their anger and hostility is replaced with that same wonder and admiration as there existed in the beginning. Even though the son loses respect for his father, he is able to gain it back through his life experience in growing up, furthering the fact that with maturation comes both positive and negative reverberations hand in hand.

Throughout literary history, authors have categorized mothers as nurturing, critical, and caring; works of literature characterize fathers, however, as providers who must examples for their children and embrace their protective, “fatherly” instincts. However, many works’ fathers fall short when it comes to acting the role of the ideal dad. Instead of being there for their children, they are away and play very miniscule roles in their children’s lives; instead of protecting he actually ends up hurting their kids. Thus, the paternal literary lens tries to determine whether or not the work’s father figure fits the “perfect father” archetype. This lens questions whether or not the father figure is his children’s active example, provider, and

Throughout the poem, a young boy's curiosity takes control of a relationship with his father, as it reveals his regretful combative past. The boy asks questions repeatedly from many different aspects including, “why we dropped the bomb on those two towns in Japan” “where is Saipan” “Where is Okinawa” “where is the pacific” (Fairchild 5-16). The questions stand as the absences of order and by all means, progress, no answers mean no progress. As the questions continue the speaker describes the father and says “the palm of his hand slowly tapping the arm of a lawn chair,” (Fairchild 7-8). The slow tapping equivalent the slow buildup of anger and fear. Following, the speaker's description of the father’s face as his son continues mindlessly is “wooden” as his eyes freeze “like rabbits in headlights” (Fairchild 6-7). So small and helpless

From the beginning of the poem, the reader can tell that the tone of the poem is consistent. There is no shift in tone, it’s simply sad and bitter. The father notices the innocence of his daughter and knows that there is bad luck that is coming for her future. The reader is able to see the father’s concern throughout the poem when he says that the “night’s slow poison” will change her. He knows that this issue cannot be changed, so he is doing what he can to avoid it becoming a bigger dilemma. By the end of the poem, it’s easy to notice that the father has become angry about the situation that is brought upon him. In the last two lines, the father decides that he doesn’t want to have children because of all the things he sees in their future, nothing but pain and suffering. His decision is expressed in the way he says “These speculations sour in the sun. I have

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.”

In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank

Although there is no clear evidence given for this conclusion, phrases such as, “He remembers himself […] Things he must do,” identify that the speaker knows the man closely and after reading the poem, it seemed clear that the writer best describes her father. So, in conclusion, this poem demonstrates a glimpse of the frustration and pain felt by those whose love ones are affected by

The poem “My Son the Man” is a short poem written by Sharon Olds. Using allusion and simile Sharon tells about a mom watching her son mature, growing and escaping her grasp. The mother expresses sadness as she reflects on her maturing son watching him grow into a man; comparing it the magician Houdini performing his mesmerizing challenging escapes.

In the poem, I get a sense that there is no bond, like my father and I have which leads to confusion in the narrator's life. For instance, in line eight when he says, "I would slowly rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of the house"(8-9), this gives me a strong sense of sadness, for him because I feel that he is greatly deprived of what every child should have a good role model as a father, and someone to look up to. “Speaking Indifferently to him, / who had driven out the cold”(10-11) is saying that they really did not know how to communicate with each other. I feel that the boy will regret not having and knowing what it is that makes you who you are, and may never get a chance to have and hold a special bond with his father and having a relationship with a person that can not be held with anyone else. This would bring an enormous amount of sadness to my life had I not had my Dad there to guide and protect me, when I could have used tremendous support and security.

Emotions are expressed immediately at the beginning of the writing to have his readers grasp his feelings of the situation. Goldstein compares Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” a “depiction of Chinese-style extreme parenting” (Goldstein 272). He then continues to maintain the reader’s attention by explaining Chua’s parenting skills by addressing the fact how the children cannot have play dates, or even watch television. Goldstein inspires his readers by giving individual’s personal experiences that reflect how they became successful.