The Role Of Father In Elegy And Natasha Trethewey's Three Oranges

Fathers are an essential aspect in the lives of their daughters. A father ultimately holds the responsibility of protecting their daughters, demonstrating the many duties of a man, and treating their daughters like a prize possession. The dependency that young daughters have on fathers affects their mindsets, self-esteem, and futures. In the book, Best of the Best American Poetry, a handful of the poems express the avid role of fathers in a person’s life. According to Margaret Atwood, the sonnet “Bored” portrays the regret and remembrance a young daughter has for her deceased father and shows how she realizes being bored with her father is better than not having his presence at all. Unlike the poem “Bored,” Natasha Trethewey’s “Elegy” takes …show more content…
Although the poets above are greatly influenced by their father’s absence, Charles Bukowski’s “Three Oranges” indisputably displays a daughter whose dad is present but she is still negatively affected by the absence of a father figure. In today’s generation, adolescents are too busy growing up that they forget that their parents are aging as well and will eventually pass away. In the poem “Bored” the poet clearly defines the cliché “you don’t know what you have until it is gone.” Margaret Atwood begins her poem by stating “all those times I was bored/ out of my mind” which implies that she never fully appreciated her father’s presence and took the boring father/daughter times for granted, causing her to be affected after he was gone (Atwood 27). In comparison to “Elegy” by Natasha Trethewey, the poet did appreciate her father’s presence but his new found absence caused her to turn “ruthless.” Her ruthless behavior caused her to question her deceased father asking “what does it matter/ if I tell you I learned to be” which shows that the poet feels abandoned (Trethewey 222). In the poem “Bored” she actively interacts with her father by “holding the log/ while he sawed it” but “could hardly wait to get/ the hell out of there to/ anywhere else” (Atwood 27-28). Now that her father is no longer presence, the …show more content…
Conceiving a child does not make one a father, and being present in their life does not make one a good father figure. In “Three Oranges” by Charles Bukowski, the poet shows a girl being affected by her father in a way that is different from the other poems but with close similarities. Contrasting the other poems, this girl’s father is present in her life but she lacks a formal father figure. One can assume that the poet’s father does not pay much attention to her due to the fact that the poem starts by stating “first time my father overheard me listening to/ this bit of music” which implies that her father has never noticed the little details about her because he doesn’t spend much time with her (Bukowski 32). Relating back to the two previous poems, the fathers were filling the position as a father figure in their daughter’s lives because they spent time and showed interest in them. In the poem “Bored,” it is evident that the father interacts with his daughter because they were together throughout the whole poem. He interacts with her by “pointing such things out, and [she] would look” (Atwood 27). In the poem, “Elegy,” the father and the daughter enjoy going out on the boat to fish together. Although the girl in “Three Oranges” has her father present, she wishes he wasn’t, by bluntly stating “kill the father” (Bukowski 33). Due to the fact that he compared a song