On My First Sonne Essays

On My First Sonne Essays On My First Sonne Essay On My First Sonne Essay In the poems On My First Sonne, The Affliction of Margaret, Catrin and Follower, the parents are presented differently and yet all similar in some ways. In On My First Sonne, the poet -or the parent- conveys his love in an unusual way. He sees the sine of loving his son too much as the cause of his sons death, and as a punishment, he has to repay him back to God because to Jonson, his son is only a loan. To a modern audience, it may seem a little harsh. However, it would be the norm in the 1600s, when the society was deeply religious and losing a child was a common thing. Despite this, the poet considers his son his right hand and his best piece of poetrie, both of which are metaphors of his son. This shows us that his son was of a great worth, and Jonson has simply learnt that why will man lament the state he should envie? Comparatively, the mother in The Affliction of Margaret conveys her love through anxiety and the desperate hope for her son to return. The mother does not care if her son is humbled, poor or hopeless of honour; after seven years without contact, she just wants him home. Her anxiety can be shown in the first half of the poem, where she is irrational with her thoughts. There are wild speculations of where her son might be, ranging from a dungeon to a desert. This wild imagination of the mothers is further empathised by the alliteration of maimed, mangled. Furthermore, out of the 11 7-line stanzas, 6 contained words ending with an exclamation mark, for example Alas! and Neglect me! This gives the readers an impression that the mother is on edge and almost in paranoia much in contrast with the fathers calm and almost joyous reaction in On My First Sonne. In Catrin, this time we see a mother in conflict with her daughter. In the first stanza, the poet is writing from memory and the repetition of I can remember you suggest that it is a very strong memory. The poet was already at a fierce confrontation with her daughter even before she was born, which is a presetting for their conflict later on. Tight red rope, wild and shouted creates a striking image of conflict and chaos, although through tender, we can also see the affection of the mother for her daughter. The tight red rope is a metaphor for the umbilical cord which ties mother and daughter together. This metaphor is repeated in the second stanza as that old rope, suggesting that although they are separated physically after birth, there is still an invisible bond that ties them together. The clear gap between the two stanzas shows this separation, and it also indicates the past from the present. Although they are at conflict with each other, the mother is torn between love and host ility. She conveys love in the same way as the mother in The Affliction of Margaret through worry, as her daughter asks to skate in the dark for one more hour. Similarly, the father in Follower also shares a complicated relationship with his son, although not necessarily conflict. At the start of the poem, his shoulders globed like a full sail strung and an expert shows the Heaneys clear respect and admiration of his father, which caused him to follow his father both literally and metaphorically. Heaney uses technical terms such as wing, sock and head rig, which suggested that he did, or wanted to, follow his father in terms of family tradition. However, now his father is the one who keeps stumbling behind him, being the nuisance that he once was. Through the tone of the last stanza of the poem, it suggests vaguely that Heaney feels some resentment and a little pity for his father, and also some guilt at not being able to live up to his fathers example. This is perhaps similar to what the mother speculates in The Affliction of Margaret about the thoughts of her son. Effectively, their roles are now reversed. One thing that is common with The Affliction of Margaret and Follower is the formality of the tone of which the parent writes about their child. This can be shown through the way which the poems are similarly structured: both poems have a set number of lines within each stanza, and each line mostly ends with punctuation. When structure this way, the poem gives off a very rigid and organised feel, which in turn sounds formal. On My First Sonne and Catrin, however, is similar to the previous two in terms of the overall tone of the poem, but different in structure. On My First Sonne is written like an inscription on a tombstone, shown by here doth lye. Catrin is different because its irregular line endings and stanzas is also a symbol of conflict between parent and child, which the other three poems structure does not symbolise. However different the parents in all four poems may be, they all love their children, and are saddened when the children no longer has dependency on the parents.