Changing Relationship Between A Father And Child example essay topic

A wise man once mused; "Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing himself". This man, was Count Leo Tolstoy, who went on to change his belief structure, values and to convert his religion from Russian Orthodox to Christianity. A couple of days ago I was cleaning out my now unused study - recently I have been finding other places to write, my bed, the bathroom, even in the bath, as the portability of the laptop proves very convenient - and I stumbled upon a book, well read, yet discarded in my 'old age'. Gwen Harwood's collection of poems was now sitting in my hand, and after five minutes of staring blankly at the book I opened it and flicked through the pages.

If I had remembered rightly her poems said much about the changing self, concluding that change developed and enriched the soul. It started me thinking about change and how many people are frightened of changing themselves. I reflected that a change in self usually occurs due to the presence of an external stimulus. Rarely does the individual initiate change. Reading through the poems I found some of my favourites, which depicted change effectively. I speculated that changing the self probably also requires a strong ego!

In Harwood's pair of poems entitled 'Father and Child', she explores the changing relationship between a father and child; the self growing up and growing old. In both poems, it is the presence of death that has caused the self to change. In 'Barn Owl" ', the child resists and finally accepts change through the realisation that death is final. Notes in the margin of my book, defacing the text, made it hard to read, but I could decipher some of my scribblings outlining the way the change had occurred.

The child confronts the death of the owl as ' "master of life and death" '; she sees the death as final and has no perception of her or the owl's pain. The images of blindness, like 'eyes that did not see', parallel the child's lack of understanding of the consequences of death. The change of self occurs because the child is emotionally disturbed by the incident. Her sorrow is profound 'I leaned my head upon my father's arm, and wept owl-blind in early sun for what I had begun. ' ' The external stimulus of killing the owl brings the child to an awareness of the complexity of death and the pain and sorrow it causes. When I first read this poem I was distressed by the death of the bird; in retrospect I focused on its impact as a life changing experience.

My notes had become almost indecipherable as I turned to 'Nightfall'. Here the persona is middle aged and is confronting her father's age and mortality 'your marvellous journey's done'. Her reluctance to accept the closeness of her father's death is portrayed through her yearning to return to the child like state of innocence. The yearning is heightened by the number of single syllable words in the final stanzas, such as her realisation that 'your night and day are one'. Moreover, unlike the child in 'Barn Owl', she understands the implications of death, 'what sorrows, in the end, no words, no tears can mend.

' ' The absence of imagery in the final lines heightens this understanding. A second poem which had caught my interest was 'The Glass Jar', which explores the traumatic experience of growing up. For this child, as for many, it seems that growing up is the hardest thing to do. The child, by capturing the sunlight in the jar, hopes to keep the monsters and terrors away. His confidence is reflected by the long flowing sentences of the opening two stanzas. The religious imagery, superimposed over the sun, suggests ambiguously that Christ is the sufferer and the comforter.

The main catalyst for the child's change of self is the violent image of the father attacking the mother, with 'gross violence'. The mother, as his 'comforter', 'would not turn her face'. Through the rejection by the mother, and the father's prior claim, the child is left emotionally isolated. The gentleness of the sun, in the final stanza, which comes to 'wink and laugh's of tens the harsh reality, but the child does not escape dealing with his fears alone He has changed from a trusting, innocent child, into a more cynically experienced one.