My Son, My Executioner Essay

As we get older we tend to reflect more on our life and get our priorities together. We tend to realize who and what is important, the people who mean the most to us and the ones we can’t live without. Who would those significant individuals be for us? For most people it would be their parents. In the poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz, and “My Mother” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, both writers express their emotion towards a parent. The poems are similar in many ways simply because they share a parent child relationship, they are also vastly different. “My Fathers Song” is a poem about a son who lost his father and is grieving and referring back to old memories, reflecting on their past and the wonderful time he had with his father. “My Mother” on the other hand is a poem about a daughter who lost her mother and is having a difficult time coping as she reflects on the decisions she made as a child and how that affected her relationship with her mother. Despite their differences, the two poems share a true connection of love towards their parent. Most notably “My Fathers Song” and “My Mother” differ in the relationship with their parent, the settings in which the memories they hold of their parents take place, and who they are mourning over, yet the two have a strong emphasis on love.

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.

Poetry is like a song without music, it has the ability to awaken your emotions and the ability to tell stories that can paint beautiful, relatable, imagery in the viewer’s mind. Upon reading the poem, “My Son the Man” by Sharon Olds, she presents a unique view on her bittersweet experience of watching her son gravitate towards manhood, “Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider” (line1), while realizing he is astute enough to escape his mother’s strong hold, “to learn the way out” (line 16). As a mother myself, I began to recognize how I can relate to the speaker’s challenges of understanding a child’s need to test limits and break free from dependency. I realized through the speaker’s obvious allusions to Houdini expressing the need to break free, the contrast used to convey the indirect references to Houdini, and the similes used to express emotion toward reflecting back on a time of innocence, accepting the need of a maturing child’s independence proves the strength of a mother’s love.

“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke sparks differing opinions within the minds of many. Roethke was influenced greatly by his experiences as a young boy. For instance, his uncle and father both died when he was the age of fourteen. “My Papa’s Waltz” is written in remembrance of his father after this dreadful occurrence. The author’s use of imagery brings light to the his adoration for his father. Notably, his way of stringing together ideas reinforces the fond memories they shared. Roethke’s captivating choice of words supports his purpose to make known the love he has for this man. While the subject of “My Papa’s Waltz” has spurred passionate academic debate from professors, scholars, and students alike, the imagery, syntax, and diction of the poem clearly support the interpretation that Theodore Roethke writes “My Papa’s Waltz” to bring attention to the loving relationship he had with his father.

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

Lament for a son is book written by Nicholas Wolterstorff, who is mourning the premature death of his son Eric who passed away in a mountain climbing accident in Austria. Nicholas Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and currently the Noah Porter Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. He is a writer with philosophical and theological interests. He has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. His book Lament for a son was written to honor his son. The book is full of anecdotes and stories about the death of his son to give voice to his grief. He writes the book with true emotions and stories to inspire

Child abuse is physical mistreatment that unfortunately happens to children everywhere around the world. In the same way, the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, describes and gives the readers an insight of what child abuse is like. The poem presents a relationship between a drunken father and his son. Therefore, the setting, sensory details, and word choice of the poem allows the reader to understand the violence the little boy goes through after his father returns from work.

The poem starts to narrow in on the relationship of apprentice and master with the lines, “This was his son, who sat, an apprentice, night after night, his glass of coals next to the old man’s glass of coals.” (ll 12-14). “This was his son,” is a powerful statement that gives not only a parental relationship but also of a father forging his son into a man. We all learn from our fathers and in the old days a lot of sons stayed home and

Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” illustrates a nightly ritual between a working-class father and his young son. In the first stanza a young boy holds tightly to his father. The second stanza describes a playful roughhousing between father and son. The fourth stanza shows again the boy’s unwillingness to let go of his father. Roethke’s AB rhyming scheme and waltz-like meter set a light and joyful cadence. The music of the waltz comes through in the reading and with it a carefree and innocent tone for the telling of the short amount of time between a hard-working father arriving home and the time when his son must go to bed.

The poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, these two poems express uniqueness and similarities. In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” a young child describes his time spent with his father. In the poem “My Father’s Song” a grown man remembers the previous memories of time spent with his father, when he was a child. These two poems coincide through tone, word choice, and figurative language to show the relationship between a father and son.

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.

“Those Winter Sundays’” and “My Papa’s waltz” are poems based on father-son relationships. The relationship in “Those Winter Sunday” characterizes the father to be hard-working as well as thoughtful. “When the rooms were warm, he’d call…”, shows that although the father would wake up to “blueblack cold” he wanted his son to wake up in comfort. However, the relationship demonstrated in “My Papa’s Waltz” characterised father to create a possibly abusive relationship as well as very toxic household. “I hung on like death” gives an example of how the “waltzing” was not fun for the child.

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.

Rather brusque words from one who Alexander pegged as, well, meek, but seldom did books match their covers. Perhaps be it from another, or be it a different day, Alex would have refuted such statements with a caustic retort of his own, yet, he found himself unbothered and moreover, somewhat placid.

“My child,” the mother says but with a touch of softness to the vocals indicating her sincerity in her thoughts. How will he do? The mother wonders like any mother would, to actually find a breath of freedom and to experience the life her son deserves. Indeed, a few months only remains for the meeting of his grave. This is their last and ONLY hope.