Home Is Where the Heart Is

Some say “home is where the heart is.” Home can be everything to some. Home is their safe comfort place they have in life. Home determines a sense of one’s identity. One poem called “The Youngest Daughter” by Cathy Song involves characters experiencing conflicting situations between the demands of their home and identity. One might think that this poem is simply about mothers versus daughters; however, this poem evokes a broader sense meaning that daughters are torn between either pulling away or pulling closer to home. In one sense, the daughter in this poem is frustrated with her current situation and aspires to do more with her life, rather than devote her time doing what her mother thinks she should be doing. Despite this feeling, she knows she should be caring for her sick mother. The role she has in her home has conflicting messages. Using the elements of tone, narrative poem, and word choice, the poem can be explicated to show how it creates and resolves the meaning of conflict between mothers and daughters. “The Youngest Daughter” utilizes the narrative type poem, which helps create and resolve the conflict in the poem. The main conflict in this poem is that the daughter has to choose between obligations and desires, while finding her own role in her home. A narrative poem tells a story, and this poem tells a story about a daughter taking care of her elderly mother. The poem is about what the daughter’s daily life is like. This shows the “obligations” part of her life. The first sentence of the poem is “the sky has been dark for many years.” This implies that everything that has been going on with her taking care of her mother has been going on for many years. Since her mother became ill, it has been the daughter’s obligation to take care of her. This obligation is based on cultural expectations. In many cultures, children are expected to take care of their parents once they age. The poem is organized into stanzas that are associated with a certain part

Cited: Meyer, Michael. “The Youngest Daughter.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print