Home As A Place Of Reflection

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

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.

When living with his grandmother, Suina describes his memories during the frigid winter. During those cold months, “a warm fire crackled and danced brightly in the fireplace, and the aroma of delicious stew filled our one room house.” Suina’s description illustrates his grandmother’s house as a nurturing environment. It is a setting in which his grandmother clearly cares for him. He remembers enduring the long freezing winter nights when “the thick adobe walls wrapped around the two of us protectingly.” The characteristics of the house showcase a sense of connectedness between Suina and his grandmother. Living with his grandmother clearly give Suina several reasons to be happy. It is not only a place that cares for and protects him, but it is also a place that “was just right.” Suina’s grandmother’s house provides him with a tremendous amount of self-confidence. Unfortunately, all of that self confidence is lose when he goes to school. School leaves Suina utterly bewildered. He begins to realize how different the two settings are. He starts to lose sight of the essential aspects of life with his grandmother that once made him so

On page 76 the entirety of the stanza is a happy tone of nostalgia. The whole stanza is the child remembering his life as a wonderful time filled with imagination and freedom. He is reminding the reader of how amazing his life was compared to his life now. Collins utilizes this tone to really ingrain in the reader that the kids younger life really was fantastic, and it sets of the reader to for a more dismal feeling when the next stanza comes around. This stanza is so exciting and it gets the reader to remember the extravagant stories they used to imagine with utter joy. This happiness is directly contrasted by the rest of the poem. Collins does a great job of distracting the reader and makes them almost forget about the sadness they read in the previous stanza so they get hit really hard with the sadness again. this is exactly how the child feels about growing up. In the final stanza the child says, “This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.” (76). The child recognizes that he must grow up and let go of what he used to hold dear at younger ages. The boys feeling are expressed as laborious and distressed, the boy clearly does not want to grow up, yet he is extremely saddened by the fact that he has to. The reader shares the kids feeling of sadness because like

After telling her daughter she can go to the church, the mother gives her a bath in rose petal water, dresses her in her best clothes, and even gives her a pair of gloves to wear and little white shoes. This is the most ironic part of the intire poem because the mother believes she is sending her to a safe place, but is unaware of the fact, that she is doing the exact opposite

In the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is filed with metaphors and symbols that represent the feeling of a child growing up and moving out onto their own. There comes a time when every parent must send off their child into the world, and these parents feel a multitude of things when sending them off. It paints a picture of a father teaching his young daughter to ride a bike, but uses this image to represent a child growing up. The mixed feeling of pride and fear as the child grows up and moves out of the nest. The use of first person past tense shows us that the narrator is recalling the time they taught their child to ride a bike and are reliving that experience with the child moving out again. The fright of watching your child speed down the road towards life is portrayed from the start and continues throughout the poem. A good parent is always worried about their child’s wellbeing; they will always worry as they watch their children head straight to the destruction that comes with living life. Though the good parent will try their best to teach their child how to ride their bike into adulthood. This poem uses imagery, word choice, and metaphor to express the fears a parent has when sending their child out on their own into the world.

The poem "To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan captivates readers by having a significant metaphorical, and relatable theme. Linda Pastan writes about an eight year old girl learning how to ride her bike, "When I taught you/ at eight to ride/ a bicycle, loping along/ beside you" (1-4). The bicycle ride is a symbol of the journey of a child growing up, taking risks, and leaving home. The author uses an compelling amount of action verbs throughout the entirety of the poem, "pumping, pumping/ for your life, screaming/ with laughter" (18-20). The verbs help to create an emotional reaction from the reader.  The voice of this poem is the most powerful technique that the author has used to portray the theme; by speaking from a parental standpoint,

Mrs. Dashwood is noticeably conflicted about leaving the family home, Norland. On one hand, “she was impatient to be gone,” even though “to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible” (Ch. 3 pg. 12). Clearly it is a struggle to relive the grief of losing her husband in the house where they spent their life together, but at the same time it is very difficult to leave the only house that her and her daughters have ever called home. This inner turmoil reveals that the sense of home can be both loved and hated. When it comes time for them to finally leave the house, “Many tears were shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved.” (Ch. 5 pg. 25) The middle daughter, Marianne, says, “When shall I cease to regret you! —When learn to feel a home elsewhere!”

A child’s future is usually determined by how their parent’s raise them. Their characteristics reflect how life at home was like, if it had an impeccable effect or destroyed the child’s entire outlook on life. Usually, authors of any type of literature use their experiences in life to help inspire their writing and develop emotion to their works. Poetry is a type of literary work in which there is an intensity given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinct styles and rhythm. These distinct styles include different types of poems such as sonnets, villanelles, free verse, imagist poems, and many more. And these distinct styles are accentuated with the use of literary devices such as metaphors, similes, imagery, personification, rhyme, meter, and more. As a whole, a poem depicts emotions the author and reader’s can relate to. In the poem’s “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, and “My Papa’s Waltz,” by Theodore Roethke, we read about two different parent and child relationships. These two poems help portray the flaws and strength’s parents exhibit and how their children follow their actions and use it as a take away in their grown up lives.

The speaker in the poem is a parent who looks to clarify how extraordinary times can be, and how effortlessly a little girl can be lost. For this situation the unique time is the time when the mother was teaching the girl how to ride a bike when she was eight in a park. Line five if Pastan’s poem reads “as you wobbled away”. This line has created a picture of the little girl not in full control of how she is riding the bike. The mother was nervous that the child will fall off the bike, and likewise, she is nervous about her daughter leaving

She can remember what it was like to feel that attachment and even lists off things she owned or did in the house she once had, but now that all of it is a pile of ash, she can see clearer now. She wrote this poem not to look for attention or sympathy, but to teach her readers to not make the same mistakes that she

In Linda Pastan’s poem “Marks” a woman is speaking about how she feel underappreciated in her family after all the things she does for them. The poem is set up almost as a report card, the things she has to do as a housewife are her subjects, and the responses that she receives from her family are compared to the

The tone of this story is one of fear, regret, and guilt. The story first leaves the reader with impression that it may be a recount of the life of a daughter who was lost due to neglect. Soon it is evident

What is home? If one looks in a dictionary the answer would come out to be, “The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” However, for anyone who has had an actual home, they would know that such a term goes much beyond its concrete description. It is an impassioned aspect filled with values and foundation of nurturing. A home is not just an abode built to live in; in fact, that is just a definition of a house. Home is a place where one not only feels comfortable, but a place they look forward to opportunely live in every day. A home is built not by bricks or wood, but with the bond of family. A home is a place that reminds a person of countless memories and values when he walks through a

In a matter of fact, home is a noun that is defined in the -Collins