Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Feb 21 reading response

All of the works we read focus on relationships, particularly family relationships. “The Video” by Fleur Adcock deals with jealousy and competing for attention from parents, whereas “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “Bored” by Margaret Atwood present a retrospective of the not so perfect relationships of the narrators and their fathers. “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas is primarily about the narrator’s relationship with his farm when he was a child. Though these works take different standpoints on relationships, each one concentrates on the idea that these relationships could have been better had the narrators known then what they know now.
In “The Video,” Ceri watches her mother give birth to her new baby sister. The first stanza of the poem presents the anticipation that this family feels while waiting for the newborn, while the second stanza portrays the after-effects of her birth. Ceri’s connection with her parents was already starting to fade when her father asked her to “Move over a bit,” so he could film her sister’s birth. Eventually when everything went back to normal, Ceri would sit alone watching the video over and over again, reminding herself why she now had to spend so much time alone. By playing it in reverse and watching her sister “go back in,” Ceri shows that she wishes her sister had never been born. If Ceri looked back on this situation when she was older, she might have focused less on the decreased attention she was receiving from her parents and tried to develop better relations with her new sister.
Another work that concentrates on family relationships is “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. In this poem the narrator recalls dealing with his father’s drinking when he was a child. Even though his father was not good to him, he still “hung on like death,” yearning for his father’s attention. Roethke combines positive imagery, such as the vision of father and son romping around, with negative imagery like “the hand that held my wrist,” which implies some aggression. By juxtaposing the negative with the positive it shows how the narrator wanted to spend time with his father, but when he actually did, it was not a positive experience. Had the narrator known this would be the pattern of his childhood, he could have had a more positive relationship with his father by keeping out of his way after he drank. By “clinging to his shirt,” he was only annoying his drunken father and putting himself in a situation to be hurt.
“Bored,” by Margaret Atwood, is also a retrospective of the narrator’s relationship with his or her father. The narrator recalls shadowing her father when she was younger and helping him with mundane chores. She remembers being bored by these insignificant tasks, even though doing them meant that she spent time with her father. Instead of enjoying the time spent with her father, she would look “hard and up close at the small details,” of unimportant objects, complaining to herself about how boring these jobs were. She originally said she “could hardly wait to get the hell out of there to anywhere else,” but now, after her father isn’t around anymore she realizes that boredom is not so bad and she would be happier being bored with her father than busy without him.
The last poem that focuses on relationships is “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas. In this poem the narrator writes about his relationship with nature. The narrator feels most at home when he is out on the farm or “about the happy yard.” The entire poem glorifies his connection with nature, but each stanza contains a reference to time. This reference serves as a reminder that these relationships are only temporary and that all things must inevitably die. Now looking back on this scene, the narrator is proud to say that even though time placed restrictions on him, “he sang in his chains like the sea,” and made the best of his life. It serves as a lesson that seems to suggest we should focus on our relationships today, not tomorrow.
Each of these works, though they contain different content, still deals with the same central theme. All of the poems describe relationships that may or may not need help. Either way, these poems all present a retrospective view of various situations in which the narrators could have developed better relationships had they known then what they know now. They provide a warning to readers that we must take the time to truly cherish the relationships we have and work to make them better before its too late.