Theme Of A Mother In A Refugee Camp By Chinua Achebe

In the poem, the main character is a young girl, who seems to be unhappy with her father’s words towards women.

TS - In the poem, “Mother who gave me Life”, Harwood explores the memory of motherhood as a quintessential part of being human.

In this poem, symbolism is used to help reader’s find deeper meaning in the little things included and show that everything comes back to the father’s fear of the child he adores growing older and more independent. “In a room full of books in a world of stories, he can recall not one, and soon he thinks the boy will give up on his father.” This sentence makes a reader assume that the story the five year old so

In this paper, I will explore the notion of irony in Achebe's "Girls at War and Other Stories". My choice of Achebe’s collection of short stories is due to the scarcity of the critics written about it. All the focus and attention went to Achebe’s novels leaving out his short stories which are interesting to study especially that they represent different points of time in Achebe’s life as a writer. I will be specifically studying three of his short stories dealing with the Biafran war and their relationship to my main topic war and identity production. These stories are “Girls at War”, “Civil Peace”, and “Sugar Baby”. As far as the rest of the collection goes, I will be studying the use of irony as an important tool that Achebe utilizes to

The role of women in society has grown and changed tremendously with the development of the world. Within the American culture, women’s rights have expanded to the extent of being able to vote for who runs our country or even possibly being the person that does run our country. Although the American culture has somewhat promoted the growth of a woman’s role in society, does not mean women receive the same respect in other cultures around world. For example, in Africa women are viewed lower on the totem pole of importance even though without them the village would fall apart. Chinua Achebe is an author that was born and raised in a village of Nigeria. From growing up there, Achebe understands the culture of Africa better than

The spacing and structure of the poem is set up to allow flow and momentum in the poem and its narrative. The speaker’s voice is present with emotion as emphasised in a natural rhythm of thought offering an honest and bare interpretation of motherhood. The open “blank space” of the poem encourages a calm and breathy atmosphere, fulfilling a mood of tranquility and bliss. Each stanza is short with a couple quick fragmented thoughts before closing each section with the power of a single word. Each stanza breaks apart a separate thought filled with a loving passion the speaker uses to stress the beauty, wonder, and over-flowing love present in motherhood. To better the structure, the poem itself is broken into three parts, each representing a stage of motherhood. The first segment of motherhood that is represented is during the moments while the baby is still in the womb and the mother waits in anticipation for the baby to arrive. This “honeymoon” phase is expressed with a tone filtered through a perception of rose-coloured glasses and excitement as the mother is in utter bliss to carry a life into the world. The

Two distinct points of views can be seen in this poem, one is that of the father and then the son. The father's point of view is more common and used more than that of the son but both displays and add to the complexity of their relationship. From the father’s point of view, he shows his concern for disappointing his son by not coming up with great stories and losing his son as five years old matures which increases his anxiety as he sees the future approaching. The father fears of a fallout in the relationship with his son “...he thinks the boy will give up on his father”(9). The sons point of view

This is fitting with the rest of the narrator’s description of these times. The closeness of mother and son, the evenings usually ending with the boy in his mother’s arms while she “croon [s} some old melody without words” (5). The narrator notes during these times, his mother would look into the fire “with great dark eyes, …to where? No one knew but her” (5). This image personifies a surreal moment when music takes the heart and mind to another time and place. The two were in harmony with each other, he forming the background of her existence while she lived each day in a pleasing manner of daily routine and motherly instruction.

Harwood wrote the poem with relatively simple composition techniques but it provides a rather big impact which helps to give an insight into the life of a mother or nurturer which bares the burdens of children.

The poem if read aloud is like a nursery rhyme but not at all loving or kind, she’s through with her dad because of all of the bad things he’s done or because he wasn’t a good father to begin with. “Barely daring to breathe or achoo” makes me think that she was afraid of him growing up, and when Plath says “Marble heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one grey toe” I think she was trying to explain as a child what she thought her father looked like, a huge guy who looked like a god and acted like one except that he is frightening and looks like a ghoul. “Every woman adores a Racist” Plath says, describing her father’s brutality and how it made him into an idol/god. Plath pushes beyond poetic tradition in her choice of metaphors, and by pummeling the reader’s senses with the garish violence of her images.

In the poem “Mother Who Game Me Life”, Harwood relates to a profoundly personal experience and also reflects upon human history to display the self-sacrificing figure of motherhood. Here, the declination of a mother to her daughter throughout the passage of time and change, is made eternal by the typical nurturing role of a mother, that is universal to the human condition. The individual experience is expressed through Harwood’s personal tone of reflection and sentimentality, in which the use of personal pronouns convey a confidential and sincere connection between a daughter and her mother. “Mother who gave me life, the wisdom I would not learn from you”, strikes unity within the audience through the use of her authentic reflection on a universal

The author explains how his “mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself.” Therefore, we know that the mother was not truly happy at this moment in time. It is possible that she had not been abused or beaten by her husband as her child was, nevertheless she was still sad because she knew that she could not help her son. The imagery that the author provides when mentioning the mother brings tears to my eyes because she has to sit there and watch her child be abused. The loud clanking noises that the pans would make would make it even worse because it just adds to her fear. Overall, the addition of the mother brings a negative tone that stays throughout the whole poem.

Lines two through five move past depicting her as the mother and express how she feels embarrassed that her works were published before she was ready to share them with the world and without her consent. She says that the "child" had been by her side until "snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true" (line 3). Basically she is saying a trusted person "snatched" her work from her without permission to take them to England to be printed. Had it not been for her brother-in-law taking her work back to England and getting them printed they may have never been known. The intimacy and feeling she shares with her work is like that of a mother and child and that bond was infringed upon when her work was "exposed to public view" (line 4). The intrusion of her brother-in-law getting her work printed is the cause of feeling that follow. Ironically the next thing she talks is the shame she has been thrust upon her by not being able to perfect the work before it was published. This is illustrated in line five where she writes, "Made thee in rags," as to say her work is like a child dressed in rags.

In the next four lines of the poem, the speaker talks about how he feels as he imagines his childhood. Even though he is in front of this woman who is singing and playing music, “in spite of” himself, his present state, this “insidious mastery of song betrays” the speaker back “till” he “weeps” to go back to his childhood. The guileful dominance of the song the woman is singing beguiles him to think about his past experience. His heart “weeps to belong to the old Sunday evenings at home.” He really misses the time when he was little, and he used to hear his mother playing piano every Sunday evening. He wants to go back to his childhood and belong to that time again.

It is always interesting to me to see what types of roles women play in popular books or novels of western history. Most novels and books focus on men as the main characters. The role of women in Things fall apart is more of a background story but their significance is deeply rooted in this book. Women play pivotal roles in society, education, and religion according to Achebe.