Father to Son
Author: Elizabeth Jennings
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Author: Elizabeth Jennings
Last updated
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Rhyming Scheme: abc aba abb aba
Alliteration: 'spent' and 'sown'
Inversion: "Yet what he loves I cannot share"
Anti-thesis: "Shaping from sorrow a new love"
Synecdoche: refers to the whole of a thing by the name of any one of its parts. Eg: "On the same globe and same land"
Allegory: "The seed I sown or spent it where"
Metaphor: The land is his and none of mine?"
Allusion: "Him prodigal" - alludes to the biblical story, "The Prodigal Son"
Enjambment: "Lines 1-3"
Simile: "like strangers"
The Father does not seem to understand the child, even though they've been living in the same house for years.
The Father tries to rekindle/rebuild his relationship with his son by use his reminiscent memories of old activities they used to perform together when they were younger, but it turned out to be counter-intuitive and instead drew the son further away from him. E.g.: buying strawberry ice cream
The Father then tries to find the original "seeds" (may refer to ideas, qualities, resourcefulness etc) that he sowed into the child but couldn't find its fruits; maybe due to the fact that the Son isn't allowing the Father to reap the fruits of his labor.
The Father feels that they talk like strangers; and they don't share anything they like in common anymore; even though the child is built to the design of his father. (Here, note that the father does not understand that he can't force everything onto the child, they they both are individuals with unique characteristics.)
The father wishes that his son would rather be prodigal (refer the story of "The Prodigal Son"… which tends to draw comparison between a model son and a loafer) than feel the chasm or space between them or worse; moving out of the house completely. He would rather shape a new bond of love from the sorrow they had faced rather than them losing touch entirely.
In the end, both the Father and the son must live on the same globe, on the same land; they will meet each other someday at some point in time. But time will not always be on their side.
Both try to speak to each other in their own understanding; which the other party can not understand.
Subsequently, this has led to the duo longing for something forgive and put out an empty hand to each other.
Over time, the parents would have forgotten how to be a child. Along with this, there is peer pressure on the child by others to be in fashion with the trends of the time; leading to the build up of a generational gap between them. It sometimes leads to a situation where staying in phase with the parents means that the status of kid among his friends is thrown outside the window, and vice versa.
A very good example is where the older generation tends to take a photo with a pose and focus more on the person; whereas the newer generation tends to focus more on taking more candid photos that capture the essence of the moment.
"You can't tell a parent about intimate matters easily." → You believe that they wouldn't understand → Leads to the building of a big wall between the parents and the children. → The parents experience frustration when their kids hold back something… because they identify the fact that the kid is holding back something.
The Empty Nest Syndrome: A syndrome in which parents feel depressed when they think and feel that their kid doesn't need them anymore.
This longing for something to forgive, where there is nothing to forgive, suggests some kind of dignity, pride or trust issues.
The son also needs to understand, however, that his father would have gone through the same stages that he did, and that he would, in fact, attempt to understand what is happening.
claim by on February 13, 2024.
