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Discuss the representation of the relationship between parent and child in Mother, any distance and three other poems. In your introduction you need to name all four poems and relate them to the question. Now write your introduction, beginning with this sentence:
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Discuss the representation of the relationship between parent and child in Mother, any distance and three other poems.
In your introduction you need to name all four poems and relate them to the question. • Now write your introduction, beginning with this sentence: Mother, any distance explores the timeless issue of how to let go when a child leaves home. On my first Sonne also provides insight into a parent’s attempts to deal with separation from their child, although it is the less common situation of separation through death.
Duffy’s poem, Before You Were Mine, explores grief of a different kind in that the child appears to be grieving for the parent she never knew, the life her mother had before becoming a parent and here it is the child, not the parent, who is jealous and unable to let go. Similarly, The Song of the Old Mother depicts a relationship fraught with jealousy and longing, though on the parent’s part.
Now you need to write your second paragraph. Look at Mother any distance and Before You Were Mine, focusing on the importance of the narrative voices and how it relates to the closeness of the bond between parent and child. • Make sure you use an example from the text and analyse. P E E
Armitage’s poem is directly addressed to the mother and the use of the second person address immediately establishes communication and therefore a sense of a strong bond between parent and child. He states that ‘any distance greater than a single span / requires a second pair of hands’ which shows that he needs her. Duffy’s poem also directly addresses the mother, ‘I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on’ which sounds a little wistful or even slightly jealous that the child isn’t a part of the mother’s joyful life at this point.
Make another contrasting point about these two poems: • This is different to… • In contrast, Talk about how Mother any distance uses a metaphor to show their relationship.
In contrast, Mother any distance shows how the narrative voice feels about the presence of the mother, ‘you at the zero end, me with the spool of tape recording / length, reporting metres, centimetres back to base’.The use of the measuring tape as a metaphor for their connection shows the little steps toward independence, inch by inch, but still with the security of the tape between them like an umbilical cord.
Now move on to considering how the relationship between parent and child differs in another way between the two poems. Try to use phrases which introduce textual references and back up your points: • This is highlighted by the phrase… • The image of... demonstrates...
In Before You Were Mine, the child’s voice addressing her mother tries to be part of her mother’s past, to re-live the memories; ‘I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics’ / and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square ‘ She is playing dress-up with her mother’s shoes, left over from her exciting past, trying to catch the elusive sight, ‘clear as scent’ of her mother in her previous child-free life. Rather than cling to the past and remain on the ground, in Mother any distance the child is excitedly reaching for the sky. The image of the ‘space-walk’ demonstrates elation at freedom as he literally walks on air.
You are now going to bring in On My First Sonne and Song of the Old Mother. Use sentences which introduce similarities and differences: • Jonson, in On my First Sonne, also uses • However, in Song of the Old Mother... • Try to incorporate the quotations you use within your sentences. Focus on techniques and language choice made by the poets.
Jonson, in On my First Sonne, also uses first person address but is saying goodbye to his dead son, mourning the lack of precious time spent with him; ‘Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy’. The use of ‘thou’ rather than ‘you’ emphasises the closeness of their relationship. However, in Song of the Old Mother, Yeats depicts the ‘old mother’ as worn-out by the constant work she has to do, exemplified by the repetition of ‘and’ in the line, ‘And then I must scrub and bake and sweep’. He shows the resentment toward, and jealousy of, her idle children who ‘lie long and dream in their bed / Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head’. The alliteration of ‘lie long’ emphasises their laziness.
Now relate this back again to Mother any distance, showing that you can compare poems effectively, focusing on the feelings of the parents toward their children this time. • Use the starting sentence, Jonson speaks of his passionate love for his son...
Jonson speaks of his passionate love for his son, ‘his best piece of poetrie’ but questions whether he loved his son too much; ‘My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy’which compares with the mother, in Mother any distance, holding on to the end of the tape measure, not wanting to let go; ‘your fingertips still pinch /the last one-hundredth of an inch’. The nurturing quality of the generic Irish ‘mother’ is shown when Yeats uses the metaphor of the fire to represent the youth of Ireland, ‘I kneel and blow / Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow’, but she nourishes it in vain: ‘the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold’.
Finally, conclude your essay, bringing together all 4 poems and focusing clearly on the question again. • Begin with the sentence: Duffy in Before You Were Mine shows the yearning of the child to connect with the past self of her mother with...
Duffy in Before You Were Mine shows the yearning of the child to connect with the past self of her mother with, ‘Even then I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello’but the repetition of the title in the last line of the poem shows the futility in this want, ‘before you were mine.’There is a sense of loss for a past she never knew and the reader feels this will affect any future relationship with her mother.
Similarly, Yeats’ and Jonson’s poems end with apparently no hope for the future; while the Old Mother has striven in vain, Jonson resolves that it is too painful to love and lose and therefore in future whatever he loves, ‘may never like too much’. Armitage on the other hand demonstrates a relationship where the child had been successfully nurtured and, though it is painful for the parent, he is finally released ‘towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky / to fall or fly’ which echoes the sense of a fledgling leaving the nest to succeed or fail by itself.
