Review Of Mcauley's Pieta 'And In The Park'

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Hardship is found in the poems of poets James McAuley and Gwen Hardwood. In “Pieta” and “In the Park” respectively both express that death is painful and filled with grief. McAuley’s free verse poem “Pieta” describes the anguish of a grieving father whereas Harwood’s focuses upon a dejected and confused mother who sits isolated in a suburban park.

The hardship of a grieving father is described at the beginning of McAuley’s poem where the narrator accepts death as a part of life and for this reason “no one (is) to blame” for the death of his child one year prior. McAuley expresses, through his short verses, that the narrator’s child “lived a day and night, then died and no one to blame.” In contrast of the detached mother in “In the park” …show more content…

This loss of self is reinforced when “Someone she loved passed by” but she cannot “feign indifference” to him and ignore him. The idea of personal challenges continues when McAuley’s narrator explains that “Once only, with one hand, Your Mother in farewell Touched you” but he did not experience this connection and is suffering because of it. The repetition of the word “cannot” in “I cannot tell/ I cannot understand” underlines the lack of comprehension of his own pain because the infant’s loss is alliteratively “A thing so dark and deep”. Harwood’s narrator continues to expose the mother’s hardship when she chats to her ex-love about how “Time holds great surprises” and “it’s wonderful to watch (the children) thrive and grow” She knows the ex lover is grateful to have escaped her current existence but she unfortunately cannot. Each time the mother converses with her ex lover, it becomes a false attempt to find happiness in her role as a mother. When McAuley’s narrator speaks of the death of Jesus, which was bloody and violent, he contrasts it with his child’s death was metaphorically “clean.” With …show more content…

Through the personas of a grieving father and a mother’s lost identity, the idea of hardship is effectively conveyed. Readers come to the conclusion that life consists of many hardships and all are stressful.

Acceptance is conveyed in the poems “Mirror” and “Remember” by Sylvia Plath and Christina Rossetti but what is accepted a how is what makes the poems dissimilar. The free verse poem of “Mirror” explores the existence of a woman who has aged and cannot admit that she is old whereas the sonnet “Remember” explores the need of dying woman to have her love accept that she will not be part of his

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