Critical Analysis of the Poem - Father to Son

Father to Son

- A Poem by Elizabeth Jennings

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
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.
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.
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.

A father can only grow his son, growing up is in the child's hand.

Jist:

Surfacing a troubled relationship with a concerned father's lament over his son's behaviour, the poem's crux is tactile to every father.

This poem evokes similar emotions in every man in the father's shoes.

Fixed with universality in thought, the poem enjoys solitude in the literature concerning the relationship between two grown-up men.

It is highly capable of malleability and the following account serves to do the same

Introduction:

The lines are written after extensive emotional turmoil inside the father's mind.

This is apparent by the first line in which he says, he does not 'understand this'.

By calling his son, a 'child', his desire to keep him within his arms and reach is evident.

Despite a togetherness of several years, their bond seems to break as the father knows almost nothing of his son. Here we do not get whether the son knows anything about his father.

This one-way approach,, in sense, supplements the poem’s charm and is intriguing in another sense.

The father feels he has killed the relationship with his son. Anyways, he tries of building it again.

The father questions his rightful authority over his son's ''land' (=his place).

They speak like strangers and there is nothing sort of any a personal touch to their communication.

The generation cap is perhaps felt stronger over here, where the father cannot share what his son loves. This gap is built over the innocent claim by the father that his son is built to 'his design'.

Miscellaneous Thoughts:

It seems somewhat ironic that while growing up, everything matures, except relationships.

The father wants his son back. The erstwhile prodigal boy returning to his 'father's home that he knew'

The tone of poetic deliverance, suggests that the father's fear is that his son is kind of lost in his 'new home'(= the newly found liberty and privacy)

He needs his son back- badly.

He says his anger stems from grief yet he chooses not to say anything further to justify it.