preview

Theme Of Watching My Daughter Through The One-Way Mirror Of A Preschool Observation Room

Good Essays
Open Document
“Watching My Daughter Through the One-Way Mirror of a Preschool Observation Room” by Robert Fanning
The poem under analysis originally comes from the book titled “Our Sudden Museum” by Robert Fanning and is called “Watching My Daughter Through the One-Way Mirror of a Preschool Observation Room”. One of his third poetry collection which revolves around the recurrent theme on family matters, this poem succinctly reflects on the unfailing nature of paternal love towards his children through the preschool observation setting. Being a father of two children himself, Fanning attempts to convey the message that resonates with parents, particularly fathers, who love their children through thick and thin. In this essay, I am going to analyse a wide…show more content…
“The one-way mirror” is a metaphor because it not only separates the father from his daughter but also prevents the daughter from seeing him. The first four stanzas of the poem suggest that the father observing his daughter sees every detail taking place in the other room. The poem includes careful description of the girl drawing a family portrait and gazing out of the window; the boy with yellow trucks; and other children playing around. In contrast, the girl from the adjacent room does not see her father nor notice that he is…show more content…
Even though it uses free-verse structure, the poem by no means lacks musical quality. The rhythm of the poem is noticeably slow-paced owing to the use of long sentences broken with enjambments. For instance, the entire poem is made up of 8 sentences: the shortest being “She wears my face Superimposed” in the third stanza. This effect of breaking the stanzas allows the reader to gain deeper understanding of the father’s poignant feeling. The use of alliteration and consonance can be found throughout the poem. The letters “g” and “f” are repeatedly deployed as in “finishing, family, figure, fall, face, forever, flicker, faces, gluing, googly, glass, grown, and glint”. The repeated sounds of the letters resemble the grieving and melancholic feeling the father is suffering. Lastly, the use of consonance adds colour to the musical quality of the poem. The last stanza of the poem consists of words ending with the letter “t” as in “against, glint, slant, and light”, creating the effect of requiring the reader to pay close attention to the father’s expressive voice and feeling about his
Get Access
Related
Get Access