The Lanyard Theme

The speaker mreflects on a lanyard , a simple woven bracelet, he made for his mother at summer camp. He stumbled upon the word "lanyard" while going thourgh a dictionary. He was "ricocheting" off the "blue walls," showed that the speaker was happy of what he found. Thinking about the lanyard, the speaker seems upset for not ever being able to truly repay his mother for the sacrifices she makes for the speaker. He lists a litany of maternal gestures from being milked from the breast to being fully fed, clothed, and educated all at her expense. "And I gave her a lanyard," the narrator notes, indicating that nothing he can do could ever repay his mother for her work. Yet any guilt the narrator feels over giving his mother such a simple gift as a lanyard is quickly mitigated by the wisdom that a mother's love is pure and unconditional.

The gesture of gratitude and kindness the lanyard represented was more than enough to repay her.

As the narrator states, the small gift "would be enough to make us even," (7th stanza). A free verse lyrical poem, "The Lanyard" relies on rich imagery, diction, and rhythm to convey a theme of gratitude and love for one's mother. The tone of this poem did start off fairly humorous, through the author's extreme comparisions which I thought had the similar extremities to that of a hyperbole. At the final stanza, the tone shifts to a more serious tone because the author is exposing how he really feels about his own gift in comparision to his mother's gifts. I think that when you are young (like pre teens), you think that things that you create on your own volition are completely sublime. However, when you are older, you realize that sometimes just making things won't be enough to impress your loved

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One of the ways the poet conveys the central theme of "The Lanyard" is through evocative imagery. For example, in the first stanza, the narrator uses a curious phrase: "ricocheting slowly," (line 1). Ricocheting is a word that usually refers to a bullet; it connotes a sense of bouncing around or in this case, bouncing off the walls. The narrator is ricocheting "slowly," though, "moving as if underwater." The metaphor of ricocheting off the walls, coupled with the simile of "moving as if underwater," combine to offer the reader insight into…
I thoroughly enjoyed Billy Collin's "The Lanyard." It explained a child's love for his mother and his desire to repay his mother for all her hard work, but we soon see that this is a futile task. Collins uses humerous comparison to get this point across. He compares something as meaningful as "a breathing body, and a beating heart" and then in return giving his mother a lanyard. This drastic comparision shows that we will never be able to repay our mothers for all they have done for us. We find out that it is ok that we cant repay our mothers in stanza 7. Collins says "when she took the two-tone lanyard from my hands, i was sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing i wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even." He conveys the point that sometimes just the thought of doing something for your mother, is enough to make her happy, and give her the emotional satisfaction and support that she gave you. There is a very noticable tone shift in the 6th stanza. the poem goes from the comparison standpoint and then to one of a confessional standpoint. he wishes to say to her now, with the wisdom he aquired as a man, that he appreciates her hardwork and tried to repay her with "sweet emotion"