Analysis Of The Poem ' Of A Daughter Leaving Home ' By Linda Pastan Essay

In the book “The Memory Keeper's Daughter” by Kim Edwards a doctor and his wife have twins and the first child is a healthy boy but then the second child that comes out is a little girl with the signs of down syndrome and he asks his Nurse to take the baby away to an institution while he tells his wife the baby girl died. Through out the entire book it is a struggle for Dr. Henry's wife Norah to have closure with the fact that her baby girl is said to be dead and she never saw her, held her, or cared for her. Kim Edwards shows through the whole book that we are only human, the themes that life is beyond our control and through the connection between suffering and joy.

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.

Few relationships are as deep as those between child and parent. While circumstance and biology can shape the exact nature of the bond, a child’s caretaker is the first to introduce them to the world. And as they grow and begin to branch out, children look to their parents as a model for how to interact with the various new situations. Through allusion, potent imagery, and nostalgic diction, Natasha Trethewey constructs an idolized image of a father guiding their child through life’s challenges only to convey the speaker’s despair when they are faced with their father’s mortality in “Mythmaker.”

In “Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan, the tribulations and joys of life are exemplified in an extended metaphor of a mom watching her little girl learn to ride a bike.The free verse poem with no structured rhyme scheme enhances the theme of the poem by demonstrating how life just happens. There is no guide to life, no manual to go by where the end goal is shown and the path to get there is outlined. Like there is no guide to life, there is no guide to parenting. A parent is given a child to take care of and lead along a path they too are finding their way in. The shorts lines in the poem show the quick pace time flies by in parents’ eyes as they watch their kids grow up. Pastan writes , “ the hair flapping/ behind you like a/ handkerchief waving/ goodbye” (Arp 856). The fast paced rhythm demonstrates how in a such a quick moment the sense of a goodbye became too real for the parents. In a blink of an eye, the little girls rides away in the bike, no longer needing her mom to hold her steady. A sad departure, it illustrates the bitter love a parent holds for their kids for they know one day they will leave. The free verse poem and its fast paced rhythm evoked by the short lines, enhances the extended metaphor of life and the bitter love of parenting.

In Peter Meinke’s poem “Advice to My Son”, he establishes a sense of maturity and experience as he as a father explains to the reader (in this case, his son Tim) on how to live one’s life. Meinke prepares his son for the wide range of dangers and pleasures that life consists of and the deeper meanings behind them. He displays the vast array of aspects of life including the physical and spiritual, long-term and short-term, realistic and idealistic, and the beautiful and ordinary. The poet displays the message to his son by use of imagery, metaphors and tone. In the frequently seen parent-to-child letters or notes, this poem focuses on typical inspiration and parental advice to ensure the best path of life for the child.

“If I should have a daughter, instead of mom, she's going to call me point B...” (Kay). For most women, motherhood is an achievement that allows mothers to build strong connections with their children. “If I Should Have A Daughter” explains the importance of experiencing life with an open heart and appreciating everything life gives and takes away from you. Sarah Kay describes how she would guide her children throughout life in this manner. Sarah Kay uses rhetorical and literary devices such as ethos, pathos, metaphors and personification to enhance her explanation of motherhood and the complexity of mother-daughter relationships in her poem, “If I Should Have A Daughter”.

Consequently, Pastan’s simple approach to poetry has allotted her a very defined place in any household. Specifically, through the use of her own experiences Pastan is able to easily evoke pathos from her reader by making her work easily understood. For example in, “To a Daughter Leaving Home,” Pastan is informal and follows no particular structure or rhyme. Paston’s poetry is self serving intended only as an outlet for her ordinary life; this poetic style has allowed for her work to remain relevant through the years as the values she shares remain prevalent today. Her style is personalized, not quite like any other, however the techniques she employs are similar to many other poets.

The first “stanza”, top four lines, the text addresses the biological father, who comes first in life’s timeline. The next four lines addresses the stepfather who commonly enters one’s life with little notice or closure between both male figures. The third section of the poem gives readers the sense of dismay that the speaker comprehends while trying to mend the relationship that society makes so vital when also feeling true support from the nonrelated. The body of the poem, which follows the English rhyme scheme, is a description of a personal experience with divorce and division of loyalty but the speaker knows this may not resonate with all readers.

Giving birth is believed to be a joyous and fulfilling milestone in a woman’s life. One expects a mother to bond with her child almost instantaneously from the point of conception. However, it is not uncommon for women to experience doubt and regret before birth and postpartum depression after giving birth. The poems “The Victory”, “Metaphors”, and “The Mother” center on motherhood, yet they transmit different messages about the subject. The authors convey their respective messages through the use of diction, tone, and imagery.

A sister or brother is someone you treasure and it hurts when they are taken away from you. Taken away symbolizes death in this matter. Abuse is something that many people go through in their lives as children and even adults. Abuse can cause loved ones to be “taken away”. This poem was written by a young girl who was abused as a child.

The poem is an extended metaphor for a parent realizing that their child is growing more independent and that the child must leave the house eventually. The overall tone of the poem is bittersweet because growing up is an exciting journey, but letting go of your child is always difficult. EVALUATION:

The tone of the poem is one of fear and astonishment. Towards the end of the poem, the speaker offers a sense of relief to us readers, as she comes to her own sense of relief when she realized that her new born was still alive and would birth “a human race” (lines 22,23, page 182, Staying Alive). This reveals the enormous amount of responsibility a mother owes to a child.

In addition to allusions to further her theme, Plath employs simple diction to reveal how deep the pain runs. When people suffer from a traumatic experience, they often go into regression and revert back to a childish state, which is what Plath communicates through her basic word choices. For example, the title of the poem, “Daddy,” a word which is used affectionately towards a father, uncovers her desperate need for love from this important figure. The repetition of the word throughout the piece stresses this idea further. Also, she uses “Achoo” in the first stanza and later writes “your gobbledygoo” which shows an infantile approach to her father’s damage. This also discloses the lack of understanding of her father and how he kept her at a distance from his world. Lastly, she mentions how he “stand[s] at the blackboard,” an object which is very familiar to children and which gives an image of him as a ruler or supervisor rather than a source of compassion. Through her employment of child-like diction, Plath conveys her reversion to childhood and feelings of insignificance when thinking of her father.

The followings are the poem which has been added with personal interpretations and the further analysis.

My eyes has never been the puffiest. I was sobbing, like a child, the night before my childhood best friend, Myka, leaves for college in the Philippines. She will not be coming back after she finishes college and so, family and friends gathered at the airport to say all our goodbyes. My friends and I gave her a book containing all the memories we’ve experienced together since we were children. We were drowning in tears because we were all going our separate ways. I tried to make people stop crying by being positive and cracking up jokes, yet I was the one bawling harder than anyone. My crying face is the most hideous, monstrous feature that I’m proud of because it made people’s stomach hurt from all the laughing.