Poems: Family and Gary Soto

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 story I chose to analyze is “Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty. The author, Eudora Wetly, is originally from Mississippi from a prosperous family, she was born in 1909 and passed away in 2001.During her early days she worked at small places involved with writing until she launched her literary career. ‘Why I Live at the P.O’ is about sibling rivalry and favoritism among family. My thesis states that this story shows a good example of favoritism among families and good insight from the outcast.

Throughout the autobiographical narrative written by Gary Soto, many different literary elements are used to recreate the experience of his guilty six-year old self. Different elements such as contrast, repetition, pacing, diction, and imagery. Soto narrates this story as a young boy at a time when he seems to be young and foolish, Soto foolmaking mistakes, but at the same time hoping to learn from them. Soto uses each of these devices to convey different occurrences in the narrative.

The speaker starts the poem by describing her mother, who was a white settler. Hogan worded this in a way that the reader could interpret as a negative connotation, which was later made clearer when Hogan pronounced the Grandmother’s hatred toward the white settlers.

Poet and storyteller Robert Bly, considerable influence on American literature, in this excerpt from The Sibling Society (1996), Bly argues and states about change of our society and starts the interesting introduction in a strange way with hidden meanings to lead to his point of what it really means to be an adult in the modern society. This passage is not completely a book as whole and was put together partially for college student to read the main focus point of the author. Bly makes points back and forth in his essay of in the between “paternalistic” society and the “sibling” society that he observed and argues the differences. He blames the first generation because of their disrespect of authority to let down in traditional values that failed to provide a moral compass for the young. The strong point of this book is his description of a disturbing development in modern society that denies to become a fully adult. Admiration for elders has disappeared and forgotten, tradition has worn out, and families are being ignored.

The authors of the four memoirs overcame their childhood obstacles with the help of their parents. Gary Soto overcame his childhood obstacle by finally listening to his mother. Laurence Yep overcame his early life obstacles by letting people into his life. Barack Obama over his infancy obstacle by accepting his father. Julia Alvarez over her barrier by accepting the U.S. All these authors have only one thing in common they all had help from their parents to achieve their obstacles.

The character grandmother in O’Connor’s story has grounds the reality of the events and drives the family into tragedy. She is a central character in O’Connor’s story and is depicted to be a dynamic character stuck in the old ways. Through her actions and the idea of being stuck in the old ways of thinking, she leads her family into tragedy. Being the main character in the story, Grandmother significantly adds to the development of the plot. The author manages to win the attention of the reader from this character owing to the manner in which she shapes the storyline. Grandmother’s reminiscing of the old ways claims a distinctive curiosity from the reader and helps in

When writing a collection of poems, most poets chose to focus on maintaining certain themes throughout their literature and Cornelius Eady is not an exception. Cornelius Eady’s collection of poems in Brutal Imagination focus on issues such as racism, family crisis, internal conflict, and death. The first part of the collection circles around a servant who works for Susan Smith and is the caretaker for her children. The story centers around the perspective of the servant who is also the overarching narrator. The story describes old version of United States when racism was still bluntly present and affected individuals identities and financial opportunities. Based off the information presented in the collection, the servant can possibly be male. The general plot follows deeply into the difficult life of the male servant through examining the issues he faces. The first poem within the collection set-ups the rest of the story with context for the readers giving them a few expectations about what they should look forward to reading further. Eady draws the reader through integrating an origin for the male servant and his connection to Susan Smith’s family.

¨Those Winter Sundays¨ by Robert Hayden and ¨Snapping Beans¨ by Lisa Parker are two different narrative poems that share the same theme. Similarly both poems consist of a speaker being affected by the relationship they have with their elders. In ¨Those Winter Sundays¨ the speaker tells us about his hardworking father who takes care of his kids even though he may come off as a harsh father. The speaker of ¨Snapping Beans¨ is a granddaughter who discusses about the change that she is going through but is afraid to tell the person that raised her. Therefore this essay compares the two poems with respect to the speaker's feelings and morals.

Many similarities and differences exist between Jeannette’s life, the main protagonist of The Glass Castle, and that of the unnamed child from the poem “My Papa’s Waltz”. Due to their drunkard fathers and less than involved mothers, it is no wonder the two juveniles share such similar point of views when it comes to their home life. However, not every child has the same life, and no two children will ever have the same experiences. As mentioned before, one similarity between Jeannette and the unnamed child from the poem are their fathers and the impact they have on the youths.

Everyone inherits something during life, whether it be money from a recently deceased relative or physical features from parents. Throughout the poem “Heritage” by Linda Hogan, the narrator remembers all the traits and lessons that she has garnered from her kin. A superficial reader of the poem might assume that the narrator is simply reflecting on said traits and lessons, but in reality she is actually attempting to illuminate and reconcile the differences in her life.

The poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke is a moving representation of childhood spent in a working middle class family. The speaker of this poem is a man recalling his childhood, his father and his mother through the means of a waltz. The following essay will present a detailed analysis of the dramatic situation and speaker through the explanations of the various poetic tools used in this poem such as similes, choice of words and style.

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.

In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.

In this essay we try to help the readers understand how life experiences shape peoples value.In the story we learn about a girl named Constancia whos grandma, who they call Abuela in the story,just came to visit her because she getting very old and would like to see the snow before she were to die.Constancia has zero respect for her grandma and wishes that she were to just leave.Her grandma gets upset and then Constancia must now go apologize to Abuela.The theme is about giving respect to all this helps the reader understand that life experiences shape people’s values by learning that respect is the best way to show that you care for someone.