Growth By Death

Growth by Death When facing the harsh realities of life during a child’s development, it hinders their emotional process which can cause confusion and early maturity. In the poem “The Laburnum,” Ted Hughes writes about a child’s rejection of their family being toxic and struggles with understanding the truth. Where lack of control of the situation begins to interferes with the speaker’s emotional growth. The intimacy caused by first and second person point-of-view, the vivid symbolism and intense imagery helps Hughes, create a loss of innocence from the speaker’s emotional distress of suffering in a destructive family. Hughes uses strong emotions from a child going through a parent’s divorce, evoking empathy for the speaker because of the child’s awareness of family issues occurring making the child vulnerable to pain and early development.

Hughes changes first person point-of-view to second person, to allow the reader to experience the speaker’s thoughts. For instance, Hughes writes about how the narrator is lost and torn by the parent’s divorce, “You could not find in yourself, with a future” (line 33), which impairs the speaker from seeing their future. The speaker uses second person to help conjure up the speaker’s emotions as the readers’ own.
Also, Hughes creates intimacy between the speaker and reader from switching the point of views, allowing the reader to see them as the speaker but also feel the speaker’s own emotion. The use of first person illustrates the speaker’s blame on his/her innocence that helped ignore the toxic family, “The laburnum/ Strengthened only in my sleep” (line 28-29). The family issues only strengthened in the time of weakness, during the time the speaker lacked control. From the use of point of view, it helps connect the readers emotions to the speakers and the symbolism used acknowledges emphasizes the speakers’