Situation: The Sense of Loss When Losing the Beloved Ones -- Comparing “ To a Daughter Leaving Home” and “On my First Son”
Essay 2 Situation: The Sense of Loss When Losing the Beloved Ones
-- Comparing “ To a Daughter Leaving Home” and “On my First Son” How will you feel when you lose your beloved ones? How will you react toward the sense of emptiness? In Linda Plastan’s To a Daughter Leaving Home (1988) Ben Jonson’s On My First Son (1616), both poems reveal the true feeling and reaction that we will have when we lose the person we love very much. The reason why they attract me is because the feeling is so simple, yet it truly happens in our life, and the poets just describe them in an insightful way. Both of the poem are expressed by the first person, who is the parent him or herself, and loves his/her child so much, but each has a different theme. In To a Daughter Leaving Home, the speaker is a mother whose daughter has grown up and is going to leave home, which triggers the mother’s memory that she once had a similar feeling when her girl successfully learned to ride the bicycle on her own and didn’t need her teaching any more. For the mother, although the incident happened a long time ago, the anxiety she had when seeing her daughter’s departure, and the scene of her daughter riding away from her independently and disappearing in the distance were unforgettable to her, for she remembered them so vividly and deeply. At both moment of seeing her daughter leaving, the mother realized that her daughter had grown up, and she wouldn’t have someone to worry that much; the girl is leaving to lead her own life. From this poem we can see a mother’s sense of loss when facing the fact that her beloved daughter is leaving away from her. While in On My First Son, the speaker is a very depressed father who is in great agony for his son died on his seventh birthday. He is so disappointed that he wishes he did not feel so intensely, and he attempts to use several thoughts to comfort himself. First is by pious thoughts (line 1-4); second is by philosophy (line5-8), yet in the end it
-- Comparing “ To a Daughter Leaving Home” and “On my First Son” How will you feel when you lose your beloved ones? How will you react toward the sense of emptiness? In Linda Plastan’s To a Daughter Leaving Home (1988) Ben Jonson’s On My First Son (1616), both poems reveal the true feeling and reaction that we will have when we lose the person we love very much. The reason why they attract me is because the feeling is so simple, yet it truly happens in our life, and the poets just describe them in an insightful way. Both of the poem are expressed by the first person, who is the parent him or herself, and loves his/her child so much, but each has a different theme. In To a Daughter Leaving Home, the speaker is a mother whose daughter has grown up and is going to leave home, which triggers the mother’s memory that she once had a similar feeling when her girl successfully learned to ride the bicycle on her own and didn’t need her teaching any more. For the mother, although the incident happened a long time ago, the anxiety she had when seeing her daughter’s departure, and the scene of her daughter riding away from her independently and disappearing in the distance were unforgettable to her, for she remembered them so vividly and deeply. At both moment of seeing her daughter leaving, the mother realized that her daughter had grown up, and she wouldn’t have someone to worry that much; the girl is leaving to lead her own life. From this poem we can see a mother’s sense of loss when facing the fact that her beloved daughter is leaving away from her. While in On My First Son, the speaker is a very depressed father who is in great agony for his son died on his seventh birthday. He is so disappointed that he wishes he did not feel so intensely, and he attempts to use several thoughts to comfort himself. First is by pious thoughts (line 1-4); second is by philosophy (line5-8), yet in the end it