FATHER TO SON (Horn Bill)

                            Chapter 8 Poem FATHER TO SON (Class 11)

By Elizabeth Jennings.ABOUT THE POET

Poet Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001) led an extraordinary life: the only woman to join the Movement (an English group of poets dedicated to an anti-romantic aesthetic); publisher of twenty-six books of poetry in her lifetime. She also published poetry for children.

1.     I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small. Yet have I killed

2. The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there’s no sign
Of understanding in the air.
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.

3. Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.

4. Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land,
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.

1. Does the poem talk of an exclusively personal experience or is it fairly universal?
The poem ‘Father to Son’ talks about a fairly universal experience. When a child is growing up, the father is usually busy with his work and is not able to take out time for his child. When the father grows older and has free time, his son gets involved in his life and has no time for his old father. This cycle is universal.
2. What does these phrases and lines indicate .

 ‘I do not understand this child,

 Though we have lived together now,

 In the same house for years.’

 ‘He speaks: I cannot understand 

 Myself, why anger grows from grief.’ 

‘Yet what he loves I cannot share’

 ‘I know Nothing of him’ and ‘Silence surrounds us’.

All the above lines indicate that there is distance between the father and son. The theme of the poem is brought out in these phrases , here the theme implies a Generation Gap and Communication Gap. In the poem, a father and his son are living in the same house since years. However the son who is an adult now, does not talk to his father.

3.     In Stanza 3 the poet says “him prodigal”. Why does he say so.

Prodigal son actually means: a man or ​boy who has ​left his ​family in ​order to do something that the ​family ​disapprove of and has now ​returned ​home ​feeling ​sorry for what he has done.

4. What is the irony in the poem?

The poet has highlighted a sharp and contrasting relationship in the poem between father and a son. The irony which a poet talk about in the poem is that they have lived for many years together yet he knows nothing much about son.

5. How is the father’s helplessness brought out in the poem?

The father and the son do not talk to each other and, so, only silence prevails. The father does not want his son to be separated from him, but it is in vain. 

6. Why is the father unhappy with the son?

The father is unhappy with the son because the son is unlike his father in most aspects and has his own thoughts and interests in spite of having been brought up in the environment and with the values that the father provided him with.

7. What is the father’s willingness in stanza 3?
The father is willing to forgive the son for showing strangeness and coldness The meaning of the last line is (Shaping from sorrow a new love) that the father will forgive his son for whatever sorrow he has given to him and try to build a new, loving relationship with his son.
8. What kind of relationship do the father and the son share? Why is it so?

The relationship between the father and the son is estranged. They live like strangers though they live under one roof. Their interests are totally different. The father does not share what his son loves. There is no understanding between the two because there is lack of communication.