Different Aspects of Childhood

The four poems in this assignment all revolve around the speaker looking back into childhood memories and recounting significant events that have affected their lives. Each poem is unique and presents different yet real childhood emotions that everyone can relate to.
“Fern Hill’ presents the childhood memories of growing up on a farm in a surreal and imaginative way. The speaker uses language that paints a fairytale picture of the farm that he grew up on and adores such as in line 9 when he says, “ And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns”. He is the ruler of his little kingdom and all that surrounds him is there for his enjoyment. Also, the structure of the poem itself is wavy as one follows the line breaks on the left side and many lines begin with “And” as if he just keeps adding more and more to the vivid and childlike picture of his childhood.
“The Video” is a humorous flashback in which the speaker recounts the birth of a sibling and comments on her playful change of emotions through time and especially in the last line. The poem starts out with the anticipation that builds when someone is about to have a baby and how frantic and excited the family becomes, especially if a child is going to be a brother or sister. Then, the excitement of the new child seems to quickly fade with time in the second stanza for the older sister because now her mother must split her time with two daughters instead of just one. The daughter gets half of the attention that she used to receive and newborns tend to require much more care. At the end of the poem the child wishes that her little sister had never been born when she says in lines 10-11, “ She watched Laura come out, and then, in reverse, she made her go back in”. This is so true with siblings and older children because although she does not want to be the only child, she still wants to get all of the love and attention that she used to.
“My Papa’s Waltz” depicts childhood memories in a very different manner. In this poem, the speaker tells the recurring story of his father coming home belligerently drunk after a hard days work looking for someone to take his anger of a miserable life out on. He feared for his mother so he always stepped in to dance with his father and did everything in his power to keep the focus on him, even if it meant taking a beating night after night. The language in the poem is brutal and rough and both the father and child put up a fight. The poem depicts his childhood as a waltz because the same steps are repeated time after time and the child becomes used to the abuse and views it as just another part of the daily life and he would fight him until the very end. Even while his father carries him to bed, he clings to his shirt ripping at him. It was just the way his father was and the environment that he was brought up in even though it was a terrible childhood for anyone to go through. A main theme of the poem is that he lived to tell about his childhood. His life as a child was about his and his mother’s survival and eventually they made it.
“Bored” is about all of the pointless manual labor, chores, and standing around watching that children have to put up with while growing up. At the time, they seem futile and raise questions as to why children are even involved in such acts like helping with yard work, dishes, and going on errands with parents. In reality children contribute very little to accomplishing what was set out to do. But the speaker keeps repeating ‘bored” throughout the poem and this can mean a couple of things. One is that the child was “learning”. Through her boredom, she learns valuable life lessons from her father through daily work. Through investigating the minute details of the time consuming situations she was forced to take part in, she learned to take in everything around her and appreciate the time spent with her father. She did not have to worry about actually performing the tasks; she just had to be there. Another meaning can be “happiness”. Although she was bored, she was happy when she spent time with her father doing chores and learning about interesting details of life. She looks back and fondly remembers what it means to grow as a curious child with the help of parents.