Explication of "To Daughter Leaving Home"

In Linda Pastan's poem To a Daughter Leaving Home  a mother watches her eight year old child successfully ride a bike for the first time. The little girl begins out wobbly  on her two wheeled bike but eventually she is able to ride for an extended stretch of time.  Her parent awaits the moment when she must aid her daughter and she keeps up but eventually recognizes that her child is able to bike on her own. This instance is both a moment of sudden realization and a metaphor for the future to this narrator.  The unassisted bike ride makes the speaker realize that their daughter is able to exist on her own without constant help by her parent. The mother us shocked by this and thinks "my own mouth rounding / in surprise when you pulled / ahead down the curved / path of the park" (6-10). The speaker is concerned that the farther the bike goes the "smaller, more breakable" (16) the daughter becomes. The final line finds this scene to be a metaphor. It states: "hair flapping / behind you like a / handkerchief waving goodbye." (20-24). The notion that on a bike the child is able to exist on her own without constant help by her parent is also applicable to the child's life as she grows older. The title of the poem To a Daughter Leaving Home serves to label this poem as the metaphor for a parent's fear when their child moves away. The poem is written in run-on lines and creates the feel of a scene being shown or a story being taught. The first seven lines are chock full of assonance featuring the letter  "o" which provides the story with a singsongy childlike feel but this ends at line eight with assonance of "surprise" and "pulled" along with consonance of "p" and "d." This switch mirrors the change of action in that once the speaker was "loping along" next to her daughter but now her child has "pulled / ahead down the curved / path of the park" (9-10). The final part of the poem utilizes repetition to convey action. The daughter is "pumping" her pedals while "screaming with laughter while her hair is "flapping" and inadvertently "waving / goodbye" (18-24). The ing repetition gives the girl great action while it seems the mother is frozen by her sobering realization and motionless while her daughter moves forward.

Explication of "Woman Work"

Maya Angelou's poem entitled Woman Work is a piece exploring the grievances and escapism experienced by female laborer and mother. The narrator creates a list of necessary tasks and thus Angelou produces an anaphora, repeating the phrase "I've got" and "The..." (1-14). The purpose of this stanza is to communicate to the reader how exhausted, exhasperated and overworked this woman is. The final four lines also prove that she is an impoverished slave in that she lived in a hut, cuts sugar cane and picks cotton. The rhyme scheme of this particular refrain is seven consecutive couplets. This creates a singsong feel and serves to emphasize the monotony of her daily tasks.
The poem moves in a different direction in the following the opening the new rhyme scheme is ABCB. The second stanza evokes the soft and soothing effect of nature. Rain can "cool [her] brow again," (18) and give her respite. The second stanza  is less mellow in that the narrator asks "Storm blow me from here...'Til I can rest again" (19-22). This speaker is desperate for an escape and wishes to be blown by nature's "fiercest wind" (20) so as to "float across the sky" (21). Only an aggressive force, like the wind, can allow her to someday be free of the metaphorical chains she's held by. The third stanza describes the feeling of snow and the way it falls "gently" and "kisses" her allowing "rest tonight" (26).  She repeats "rest" so as to further emphasize her desperation. The closing of the poem is a listing of various aspects of nature and an assertion by the narrator that it is "all that I can call my own" (30). This woman is tired of subjecting herself to a miserable life of exhaustion and doing everything for everyone else. She cleans, cooks, works and tends to children and the sick. All this woman possesses is what nature freely gives her, for her life is in the hands of everybody else. She works tirelessly for their benefit and simply desires rest.

Chinua Achebe’s “Dead Men’s Path” explication

Chinua Achebe’s short story “Dead Men’s Path,” follows Michael Obi’s experience as headmaster of Ndume Central School. Achebe explores a variety of themes and ideas in this piece such as ambitious intentions versus actuality, modernism versus tradition, literal life versus spirituality, vainness’ tendency to be problematic and finally missionaries versus native people.

The exposition of the piece describes a scene featuring Michael and his wife Nancy. The two discuss his new job. Nancy appears vain and selfish with actions such as acting out magazine articles. She is described as being “infected by…passion for ‘modern methods.’” Michael shares this obsession with modern life and can be inferred as representing white European ideals. Obi is described as “energetic” and possesses “enthusiasm” regarding his job. His ambitions are vast and focused on reforming the “narrow views of [the] older and often less educated” (10 Modern Africa as the Crossroads of Culture) villagers.

Michael Obi sets off to make over the Ndume School and creates beautiful flower beds that contrasted and “marked out the carefully tended school compound from the rank neighborhood bushes.” Obi hopes to beautify and make modern Ndume but a village pathway interferes with its grounds. The pathway extends from a shrine to a cemetery and Michael is “[amazed]” (11 Modern…) that the village people are permitted by the school to continue this passing through practice. He is concerned with keeping up appearances and fears the judgment of the Government Education Officer.

The village’s priest visits Michael after he creates a barrier limiting the path. The priest claims that “the whole life of the village depends on” the path for a spiritual connection to life and death. Mr. Obi explains that “The whole purpose of the school is to eradicate just such beliefs as that…Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas” (12 Modern…). Obi paints himself as extremely ignorant to the culture of this village and the clash of missionary versus natives is present in his desire to reform their way of life. His regulations interfere with their religion.

Two days pass following this interaction and a young woman of the village dies during childbirth. Obi awakes the next day to see his flowers “trampled to death” and a building “pulled down.” The irony present is that the woman’s death is blamed on his blockade and thus his attempts at beautifying Ndume have been thoroughly destroyed. Later that day a white Supervisor visits and chastises Obi for creating conflict with his “misguided zeal” (12 Modern…).

Ultimately, Obi’s ambitions lead to his demise. This was due to a blatant ignorance regarding the spirituality of the villagers. Michael Obi’s craving to make Ndume modern results in the death of a villager and thus the downfall of his school. It can be inferred that Chinua Achebe created this piece out of frustration with missionaries’ disrespect for Native African’s way of life.  

Explication of "My Mistress' Eyes"

Shakespeare, a writer known for his use of sonnet, decides to parody this love-obsessed style in My mistress' eyes. Shakespeare reforms the quintessential Petrarchan subject of love by opening his poem with "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." Instead of revering this mistress Shakespeare stakes the claim that her eyes don't shine anywhere as brilliantly as the sun. He continues his onslaught of her appearance with statements that her lips are "coral" not red and "her breasts are dun." A commonly accepted sign of beauty in Elizabethan times were gold threads spun into fanciful hairnets and Shakespeare references this and perverts it in this line "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head." Shakespeare goes so far as to call himself out on the hopelessly romantic tendency of poetry. In The Taming of the Shrew it is said "Such war of white and red within her cheeks!" (4.5.32) and in My mistress' eyes it's stated "I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks."
The poem experiences a shift with the line "I love to hear her speak" but is instantly qualified with "music hath a far more pleasing sound." It appears that despite the speaker's distaste for her outer looks they appears to be thawing in regards to cold remarks of unkindness. The closing of the poem reveals the narrator's true feelings for the mistress. They state "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare." Here, Shakespeare is claiming that despite her vastly average appearance and lack of goddess-like qualities this woman still evokes a "love as rare." This rare love is "As any she belied with false compare," or as real as every woman who has been misrepresented by fairly ridiculous comparisons.

Early Appearances of Themes in "The Dubliners"

After reading "The Sisters," I can identify two themes that may be present throughout the entirety of James Joyce's "The Dubliners." The first and most prevalent theme is death, particularly how death affects those that are still living. This is best seen in Father Flynn's death and how the narrator and Flynn's sisters react to his passing. It appears that dying has paralyzed these characters. The narrator describes Flynn's decline as "paralysis" (1) and this unnamed protagonist partakes in inaction himself such as not entering Flynn's shop, refusing to eat, having an inability to pray and not conversing.

A second theme I notice is relationship and how they differ from person to person. This is most prevalent in the relations between Father Flynn, the speaker and Eliza. The narrator appears to have a close bond with Father Flynn and describes how he educated him in "how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church" (5). Mr. Cotter calls this relationship "bad for children," (2) due to the age gap but our protagonist disagrees. Although later the narrator has a negative dream about this religious figure. Our narrator seems to feel bad about Flynn's death but he is hesitant to show it. Eliza is mostly the opposite of this and is able to articulate her grief. Eliza, a sister of Flynn, is said to have cared for him, like the narrator, and she identifies his mental decline and laments his death. The narrator seems not to have realized Glynn's insanity and thinks "I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death" (5), instead of mourning his loss.