Nettles and Catrin present parent-child relationships in different ways, possibly as a result of the authors’ personal experiences. The father in Nettles tries to protect his son from any pain and danger the world throws at him. In Catrin, there is too a parent-child relationship between the mother and daughter, but at times it seems strained and fraught with conflict.
Firstly, Vernon Scannell uses imagery to personify the natural world as harsh, as if it is at war with the boy and ultimately his father. By the second line, an image of weapons is created when Scannell refers to the nettles as “green spears”. This personifies the barbs of the nettles and portrays them to be an actual army with “spears”. Moreover, Scannell describes the nettles
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The poem consists of two stanzas, the first in the past, and the second in the present. But the images of conflict in the poem continue, showing how the parent-child relationship hardly changes over time and is still ridden with strain. An uneasy feeling is developed in the poem through the use of enjambment, creating the lack of any rhythm. The absence of a rhyme scheme further adds to this. This could have been done by the Clarke to mirror the uneasy conflict present in the poem between the mother and daughter. However, it could also represent the natural and sporadic emotions of the mother or even a personal experience of the author. The poem is also named “Catrin” after the daughter, but the name is never used in the stanzas. This may have been done to show that the mother and daughter are so close that they do not address each other by their …show more content…
One theme is two-way relationships that both pull parents and children together whilst pulling them apart. This is illustrated when the mother describes an “old rope, Tightening about my life”. This represents a submerged rope (representing the invisible forces of attraction between the mother and daughter) attached to a boat in a harbour (representing the mother and daughter). It may seem like the boat and harbour are free, but when they try to go their own ways, the rope tightens and pulls them back together. This is not the only theme that reveals the complexities of the parent-child relationship. Another theme is how parents can be torn when their children grow up. The mother seems to be happy that her child is growing up and becoming independent but also seems to resist it. This can be seen from the description of traffic lights. The cars “taking turn” could represent the mother and daughter going on their own paths. The traffic lights alternate between letting and not letting cars through. The lights mirror the sporadic emotions of the mother. It is like they can’t decide to let the girl go on her own independent way in
The mother and daughter have a very distant relationship because her mother is ill and not capable to be there, the mother wishes she could be but is physically unable. “I only remember my mother walking one time. She walked me to kindergarten." (Fein). The daughter’s point of view of her mother changes by having a child herself. In the short story the son has a mother that is willing to be helpful and there for him, but he does not take the time to care and listen to his mother, and the mother begins to get fed up with how Alfred behaves. "Be quiet don't speak to me, you've disgraced me again and again."(Callaghan). Another difference is the maturity level the son is a teenager that left school and is a trouble maker. The daughter is an adult who is reflecting back on her childhood by the feeling of being cheated in life, but sees in the end her mother was the one who was truly being cheated. “I may never understand why some of us are cheated in life. I only know, from this perspective, that I am not the one who was.” (Fein). The differences in the essay and short story show how the children do not realize how much their mothers care and love
Intergenerational conflicts are an undeniable facet of life. With every generation of society comes new experiences, new ideas, and many times new morals. It is the parent’s job go work around these differences to reach their children and ensure they receive the necessary lessons for life. Flannery O’Connor makes generous use of this idea in several of her works. Within each of the three short stories, we see a very strained relationship between a mother figure and their child. We quickly find that O’Conner sets up the first to be receive the brunt of our attention and to some extent loathing, but as we grow nearer to the work’s characteristic sudden and violent ending, we grow to see the finer details and what really makes these relations
All through the times of the intense expectation, overwhelming sadness, and inspiring hope in this novel comes a feeling of relief in knowing that this family will make it through the wearisome times with triumph in their faces. The relationships that the mother shares with her children and parents are what save her from despair and ruin, and these relationships are the key to any and all families emerging from the depths of darkness into the fresh air of hope and happiness.
The two poems which I am studying are Nettles by Vernon Scannell and Sister Maude by Christina Rossetti . Both of the poems are based on relationship. Nettles is the relationship between father and son . The father who is trying to protect his son from hurting himself in a nettle bed . In Sister Maude the relationship is between sisters and how betrayal can rip a family apart.
It let the readers see it from a loving brother’s perspective, to see his thoughts, loss, and questions. The poem by Michael Lassell does not have a rhyme scheme. There were a lot of imagery and word choices that stood out. When he said “looks like
In turn, The Road generates many themes throughout the book, but the most prominent is the unbreakable bond between a father and ...
The poem does not exhibit a rhyme scheme, nor does it display any odd stanza breaks. The obvious organization of the poem allowed the poet to add a rather bonding experience for the reader. Although it seems the speaker adds no effort in creating the stanza structure or entertaining elements of the poem, as it is monotonous to add rhythm to a poem consisted of sincere writing, the poet strategically placed each stanza. The speaker begins the poem with introducing her past encounters with the quilt, she describes in her first stanza,“My sister and I were in love/ with
One theme is learning to deal with death. People deal with death in many different ways, and it shows in this story. Anse took Addie's death rather well, which shows that they didn't have a very loving marriage. Most of the children, however, mourned the death of their mother greatly. Some children weren't as sad as others because their mother had been sick for a while and they knew she was going to die. One son was always crying because he and his mother were very close. But one child, Dewey, became pregnant about a month before her mother died. While everyone was trying to set up the funeral for Addie, Dewey was stopping at every store possible to try and find a drug that would abort her baby. She had so much anxiety worrying about this baby that she didn't have time to mourn the death of her
The theme of this story is “speak”. To me that means that if something bad happens to you that you need to talk to somebody about it and not just bottle it up inside. When people don't know what happened they assume things and they'll take actions that may hurt you more because they don't know the truth because you never spoke about your problem.
O’Connell uses an array of literary devices throughout her poem. For example, The father’s “anger bumped into the furniture”, is a personification of the father’s emotions. While, in the next stanza, there is a line with an “m” as well as an “s” alliteration with the line of “my membranes silent, my eyes closed”. And in the last stanza O’Connell uses in inside rhyme of the words “complain” and
They are a ‘regiment of spite’, and are described using the metaphor ‘spears’. Within the first three lines of the poem, the nettles are presented as aggressive and a violent group of soldiers to reflect the speaker’s need to protect his child. The speaker is shown as taking revenge against the nettles, the writer again personifies them, describing them as a ‘fierce parade’ as if they were soldiers standing to attention, cut down by his scythe. The nettles are given a ‘funeral pyre’. Additionally, Scannell uses alliteration when he says ‘white blisters beaded on his tender skin’. The alliteration using the ‘b’ sounds suggests that the swelling, painful injuries, and the child’s skin is ‘tender’, a strong contrast to the language used to describe the nettles. Similarly, Armitage uses strong language to describe injuries of the husband in ‘The Manhunt’. Many of the first lines of the couplets have prominent verbs, reflecting the activities of the wife as she conducts her ‘search’. Words and phrases like ‘handle and hold’, ‘explore’, and ‘mind and attend’ are all referencing to the carful treatment of her husband’s injured body; this suggests her patient care for her husband’s mental state. The speaker uses metaphors to refer to parts of the husband’s body. Armitage compares them to inanimate objects rather than to living things. He says that his jaw is a ‘blown hinge’. Going into depth, this could
Child rearing practices have long been analyzed to understand the of affects child development; the plays, Fences and The Tempest, depict opposing parenting styles – thus causing the children to develop in their own unique way. Although both fathers, Troy and Prospero, control their children and challenge societal views, they display differing levels of control and attitudes toward society. While Troy attempts to control every aspect of Cory’s life and refuses to see how times have changed, Prospero allows more freedom for his daughter, Miranda and goes against society for his forward-thinking ideals. The development of Cory and Miranda is comprised of two components: interactions with their father and interactions with society. Through examining
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
Rhyme scheme follows quite a loose A, B, A, B pattern. The reason for the description of loose is that some lines end without true rhyme. For example, 'her fate' (l.2) then 'she sat' (l.4) does not follow the pattern which has been set out for most lines such as 'to bemoan' (l.1) and 'alone' (l.3). Furthermore, dialect may also interfere with pronunciation, especially with the end words of 'tongue' (l.6) and 'wrong' (l.8). This reoccurs later on with 'strove' (l.33) and 'love' (l.35) as well in other areas of the poem. However, seeming as this was composed in the 17th century, diction would have been different to that of the contemporary reader, meaning the form of the poem, in terms of reading aloud, may have had the correct rhyme intention.
There is a noticeable gap in regards to family conflicts and parent-child relationships in today’s society; it is also a prominent topic in writing. “The developmental stake and developmental schism hypothesis provides a useful framework for understanding why tensions exist in the parent and adult child relationship across the lifespan”(Psychology and Aging). This means that due to behaviors changing and the world around us changing, that it causes altered perspectives between the parent and the child which causes problems. In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” and Sherman Alexie’s “What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona,” the reader notices a conflict between the children and the parents. Although the three stories slightly alter from each other, the messages are still relevant. The three stories present topics that are troubled in today’s society such as parents dealing with a lack of appreciation from a child,