Poetry Essay

Matteo Di Carlo

ProfessorCandia

English 102

March 12, 2013

Throughout the history of poems, the one great thing that continues to grasp people’s attention is the overall use of literary devices to describe relationships between certain things and create a specific idea. Various literary devices are used together to allow the reader to convey a firm impression. Symbolism and mood act as just two of the more important literary devices in poetry, which are constantly used to further prove a message. One major relationship that poets seemed to write about a lot, is the importance of parents and children, and how they are drastically different from one another, yet learn from them at the same time. Two examples of poems that establish a relationship between parents and children, through the use of numerous literary devices, are “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, and Thomas Hardy’s“Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?” Both poems explain through mood and symbolism, how the relationship between parents and children is of great importance, and further progresses into great meaning.

One example of a poem that explains the significant difference between parents and children is Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son.” In the particular poem, Hughes uses symbolism to create a meaning for the crystal stair. The symbolic feature of the crystal stair is meant for readers to understand the many hardships parents go through to get where they are, and continue to move forward without giving up, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. / It’s had tacks in it, / And splinters,” (2-4). Through the description of the roughly structures stairs, readers can determine the life of the parent was not an easy one. Hughes continues to explain the difference between parents and children through the theme of never giving up. The theme allows for the son to be seen as different, in the way the mother speaks to him, “So boy, don’t you turn back. / Don’t you set down on the steps”(14-15). The dialogue between the parent and child, shows the modification of the son from the mother. It’s clear that the use of theme plays its part in proving that parents and children differ immensely. The metaphor Hughes uses repeatedly shows that the parent wants the best for the child, but since the child is younger and more immature, he can be seen as different from the parent, “And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (20). Life hasn’t treated the parent well, but she continues to move forward and never give up; something that the child has a hard time understanding. Conclusively, the literary devices used in the poem, create a deeper meaning to the idea that children contrast from their parents in substantial behaviors.

In“Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?,” another poem, Thomas Hardy proves through a few different literary devices how distant the ideas of a parent and a child can be. Hardy describes the mood of the parent in stanza 2 in the poem, as eager to see her children come to visit her grave:

“Then who is digging on my grave,

My nearest dearest kin?’

-- ‘Ah, no: they sit and think,‘What use!

What good will planting flowers produce?

No tendance of her mound can loose

Her spirit from Death’s grin.’”(7-12)

When discovering the children no longer remember her, she begins to understand the idea that children grow distant of their parents, because of the simple fact that they carry out their own lives. The same stanza applies to the literary device conflict, and how the use of it also shows the way parents and children are different and grow distant. The mother faces conflict because she longs for someone to visit her grave. However, she is faced with the fact that children will grow and endure significant changes that differ from the parent’s views. In some sense, Hardy also uses irony to explain the fact that children will grow distant from their parents. In stanza 5, the mother is so desperate for her children to come visit her, or anyone for that matter, making it ironic that she becomes overjoyed at thinking the dog has come to visit her:

“Ah yes! You dig upon my grave…

Why flashed it not to me

That one true heart was left behind!

What feeling do we ever fine

To equal among human kind

A dog’s fidelity!”(25-30)

With the line,“That one true heart was left behind” (27), we understand that irony takes place here. She realizes that everyone, including her children, has moved and left her behind, because children, again, become detached from their parents. Thomas Hardy uses such literary devices as mood, conflict, and irony, to clearly describe the relationship between parents and children.

In theory, poems over time have all been a compilation of literary devices that the authors use to convey a message. Literary devices such as, and more importantly, symbolism, mood, and conflict, all help prove the relationship between parents and children. In both Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son,” and Thomas Hardy’s “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?,” the authors use specific literary elements of writing to convey the indication that parents are not the same as their children. Children, similarly seen between both poems, no matter how influential or strict, will become their own person. Without the help and nourishment, it’s obvious that children would get nowhere; however, if everyone grew to be the same exact person that their parents want them to be, the lack of diversity would be tremendous.

Works Cited

Hardy, Thomas.“Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?”

Hughes, Langston. “Mother to Son”