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.

The first and second person point-of-view gives the speaker’s thoughts and perception of the situation.

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’

narrative.
Hughes use of symbolism provides greater meaning to the poem. The “Laburnum” is the focus of this poem, which symbolises a toxic family tree because of the poisonous seeds it contains. This family is facing difficulties of the parent’s divorce where “with their bare hands they tore up the Laburnum/ By the roots” (Line 35-36) destroying the family tree by their separation. The separation, causing the speaker to struggle with the truth. The seasons also impact the family, “winter barely half over” (Line 30), where winter symbolises the death and despair of the family. The speaker feels pain over the divorce, but is understanding the importance of it. The symbolism enriches the poem and intensify the imagery.
Lastly, the imagery adds depth to the words, as well as put emotions into the images. The image of “The laburnum like a dressed corpse in full yellow” (Line 6) illustrates a contrast between dead and alive. Where the laburnum represents the death of the family, however still the members are still alive. This imagery provides insight of the speaker’s visual interpretation of the situation and how he grows to understand that the family was self-harming.
Hughes unity of point of view, symbolism and imagery establishes the suffering in the speaker through the splitting family, which a reader could easily identify the battle to understand in the developing child.