Poem Analysis Of To A Daughter Leaving Home By Linda Pastan

Have you ever wonder how people survive and thrive in Antarctica? In the excerpt from the story Alone by Richard E. Byrd the narrator explains how a man lives in Antarctica for 5 months during the winter alone in -83°F weather. Being alone changes a person’s attitude and state of mind. When you are alone people tend to start to become more negative and have a gloomy mindset.

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.

If an artist were to paint a picture depicting the poem “Oregon Winter” by Jeanne McGahey the colors that would predominate are gray and brown. Some of the visual details are the gray farmhouses with gray smoke coming from the chimneys. There would be soaked green hills in the background and brown “blotches of wet on the dusty road” leading up to the houses and barns. Visible from the windows of the barns are lofts piled high with wet yellow straws. The picture would also capture the sagging plumages of the wild geese flying in the sky next to the bloated gray clouds bursting with rain. Finally, there would be farmers conducting their chores, getting drenched in the slow, heavy rain of winter. It is dreary, and no one is in a rush.

“Once upon a time there was a wife and mother one too many times” (Godwin 39). This short story begins with the famous opening, once upon a time, which foreshadows that the story line will be similar to a fairy tale. It raises expectations for the story that all will be magical and end happily. A typical modern-day fairy tale is that of a distressed character who overcomes an obstacle, falls in love with prince charming, and they ride off into the sunset; living happily ever after never to be heard from again. Godwin however, puts an unexpected twist on “A Sorrowful Woman”. This short story is a tale about what can happen when everyday roles take over our identity. Ultimately, this short story challenges societal expectations of marriage

In the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is filed with metaphors and symbols that represent the feeling of a child growing up and moving out onto their own. There comes a time when every parent must send off their child into the world, and these parents feel a multitude of things when sending them off. It paints a picture of a father teaching his young daughter to ride a bike, but uses this image to represent a child growing up. The mixed feeling of pride and fear as the child grows up and moves out of the nest. The use of first person past tense shows us that the narrator is recalling the time they taught their child to ride a bike and are reliving that experience with the child moving out again. The fright of watching your child speed down the road towards life is portrayed from the start and continues throughout the poem. A good parent is always worried about their child’s wellbeing; they will always worry as they watch their children head straight to the destruction that comes with living life. Though the good parent will try their best to teach their child how to ride their bike into adulthood. This poem uses imagery, word choice, and metaphor to express the fears a parent has when sending their child out on their own into the world.

The speaker in the poem is a parent who looks to clarify how extraordinary times can be, and how effortlessly a little girl can be lost. For this situation the unique time is the time when the mother was teaching the girl how to ride a bike when she was eight in a park. Line five if Pastan’s poem reads “as you wobbled away”. This line has created a picture of the little girl not in full control of how she is riding the bike. The mother was nervous that the child will fall off the bike, and likewise, she is nervous about her daughter leaving

the quote I chose for this blog is from page 21. I wanted “I had been trying to use my brain on my problems for twenty years. I was over my brain” This is a quote from the Pharmacists mate by Amy Fusselman the new book we are reading. In this part of the story the main character is having a crisis trying to find a healer that will help her. She found a healer in New York city only to find out that healer had moved.

In the first stanza it is the semantic field of water: ‘waters’ (twice), ‘sea’, ‘drowning’ and ‘being drawn’. As I mentioned earlier, water is often the symbol of life but it also evokes tears, sadness and despair.

he poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan describes the very memory of a mother teaching her younger daughter to ride a bicycle. The title of the poem says that the said “daughter” the author is speaking of is older now, but the poem concentrates on the past. Pastan’s figure of speech with the use of metaphors, imagery, enjambment show how the bicycle is a part of life’s journey and the diction helps demonstrate the young daughter’s maturation from a child to an adult.

The second poem I chose to react to is called “Close The Gate” by Nancy Kraayenhof. The first time I heard this poem I was at my grandpa’s funeral a couple of years ago. At the time it didn’t mean much to me because I was too young to understand the meaning behind it. I decided to reread it for this assignment and it really struck close to home because my grandpa was a farmer and my dad still is one. I think because I had also heard it and not read it the first time, I missed some important style and language differences that I think could have helped me understand it better the first time.

Thus, introducing our second poem, which touches on a very different stage of motherhood; letting go. The story of To a Daughter Leaving Home is about a mother teaching her daughter to ride a bicycle, which is a monumental stage of development for most children. However, I think the poem is a metaphor for something even bigger. as the title suggests I believe the true meaning is about having your children physically leave home. For a mother this is probably the most simultaneously rewarding and frightening moment to endure. The poem talks about how the mother watches the child speed away from her, growing smaller and more breakable, this to me symbolizes the devastating transition between a child’s complete dependence on their mother, to the genuine need for independence they require to become an

The overall, poem is about a boy named Junie who died from AIDS that aunt named Ida has a strong love for him. The poem begins with Aunt Ida sitting with Junie’s hospital gown, dungarees, his blue choir robe with the white gold sash and a necktie” given back after he passed and she wonders what she should do with all of it. She starts talking to her niece Francine about what she should do and she suggests to make a quilt and how that's what people do all around the country. Then, Aunt Ida remembers how quilting was hard and how her mom and mom’s mom taught her how to quilt but they were always correcting her because she was doing it wrong. But, she starts sewing the quilt and making letters spelling Junie out of each piece of clothing like

I know you have been having a struggle to let things go. I understand that it is hard to let go of things that you love but, sometimes it is for the best. In the poem it says “when things disappear she lets them go” this just shows that when you lose something or someone yes it is hard to let them go. I feel like since your boyfriend left all you can think about is how you could have made things better for him to stay and not leave. I am telling you the truth there is going to be a time in your life that you will realize that you need to not be sad for the things that you lost but happy for the things that you have. Show him that you are sad but you are also happy because now you have even more time to focus on the things that you love.

The title of the poem is “To a Daughter leaving Home” it tells you a lot of what the poem is talking about. I decided to use this poem because my parents are both going through what this mother is going through, graduating college and soon starting my life in the military. Mrs. Pastan wrote this poem describing a parent’s emotional state as her daughter goes away. In the poem the stanzas all have different meanings but three caught my eye. The first one was the moment as she ran along side her daughter teaching her to ride a bike, which symbolizes how the speaker has raised her daughter and was with her through all the wobbles in her life. The second one is the daughter rides further and further away on the bike, the speaker is growing more

The poem is spoken entirely by the mother, leaving the daughter’s voice absent. At eight-years-old, the daughter does not realize what it means to have successfully ridden a bicycle. To the daughter, it is just an innocent bicycle ride. “The hair flapping / behind you like a / handkerchief waving / goodbye” (21-24). For the mother, this is a milestone. Her daughter has done something without her help. The daughter is getting older and is ready to go off on her own. The mother is not ready for her daughter to grow up yet, “I / sprinted to catch up, / while you grew / smaller…” (13-16). Pastan is playing with the idea that mother’s do not want their children to grow up. Therefore, when a child reaches a milestone, such as riding a bicycle, it creates a sense of sadness for a parent, that a child doesn’t quite understand.