Innocence In Gwen Harwood's The Violets

Gwen Harwood’s seemingly paradoxical examination of personal experiences and universal concepts possesses sufficient textual integrity that it has come to impact with a broad audience and been the subject of a number of critical perspectives. Harwood’s “Father and Child” and “The Violets” enhances my understanding of the inevitability of maturation as a result of a loss of innocence and the acceptance of mortality. Harwood’s representation of these profound ideas through the combination of poetic devices and a reflective tone retains a timeless significance and offers the reader an extensive, relevant and enduring exploration
Harwood’s analysis of the universal concept of loss of innocence is examined through poetic devices in “Father and …show more content…
The natural reference to dusk which is the time from day to night foreshadows to the reader that the persona will experience a movement from purity to adulthood. Harwood uses the motif of time as a medium to express the child’s ignorance. The rhetorical question Where’s morning gone?” is representative of child’s state of mind prior to the loss of innocence as it reflects the child’s naivety of how time has passed. The child subconsciously mourns the loss of time and describes it as the “thing I cannot grasp or name” which reinforces the concept of childhood naivety. However, as the persona comes to terms with the realisation that each ‘morning’ does in fact slip away it implies the gain of wisdom and through this there is a tone of sadness and despondency shown through high modality terms such as “tears” and “stolen” emphasising the painful process of maturation. Hence Harwood’s manipulation of poetic devices to convey meaning in both the Father and Child and The Violets has heightened my comprehension of the significance of the loss of innocence in order to begin the path to