In “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan (reprinted in Thomas R. Arp and
Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sounds, and Sense, 12th ed. [Stamford,
Cengage Learning, 2009] 869-870), is a very emotional poem about a daughter who is leaving home for the first time to live on her own. A mother recalls how she taught her young daughter at the age of eight to ride a bike, and her fear for her safety while watching her learn. She is growing up faster than her mother expects her to. The mother worries will she be okay, does she have enough money for food? Will a young boy break her heart? She explains how she accepted the fact that her daughter is moving on in life. The poem hit me where it should, straight to the heart. I …show more content…
The lines loping along/ beside you/ as you wobbled away (lines 3-5), is a good example. A mother is following beside her daughter while she is learning to ride her bike, in which she is not in control of. When reading this poem you can visualize what the speaker is writing about. As her daughter is riding she sees her pumping, pumping/ for your life, screaming’ for laughter (lines 18-21), has the reader imagining with sight, and sound. The speaker watches her daughter ride further and further away on the bike, ahead down the curved/ path of the park (lines 9-10). This shows the speaker is worried about her daughter, as she will experience new things in life with a few rough patches. Figurative language is used near the end of the poem. The hair flapping/ behind you like a/ handkerchief waving goodbye (lines 21-24), represents a simile. As you are reading this line it helps you as the reader see what the author is picturing while writing this poem. The title of this poem makes the reader think the poem would be when a daughter who is an adult leaves home but, Pastan is actually taking an old memory of a day of learning to ride a bike as a
Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sounds, and Sense, 12th ed. [Stamford,
Cengage Learning, 2009] 869-870), is a very emotional poem about a daughter who is leaving home for the first time to live on her own. A mother recalls how she taught her young daughter at the age of eight to ride a bike, and her fear for her safety while watching her learn. She is growing up faster than her mother expects her to. The mother worries will she be okay, does she have enough money for food? Will a young boy break her heart? She explains how she accepted the fact that her daughter is moving on in life. The poem hit me where it should, straight to the heart. I …show more content…
The lines loping along/ beside you/ as you wobbled away (lines 3-5), is a good example. A mother is following beside her daughter while she is learning to ride her bike, in which she is not in control of. When reading this poem you can visualize what the speaker is writing about. As her daughter is riding she sees her pumping, pumping/ for your life, screaming’ for laughter (lines 18-21), has the reader imagining with sight, and sound. The speaker watches her daughter ride further and further away on the bike, ahead down the curved/ path of the park (lines 9-10). This shows the speaker is worried about her daughter, as she will experience new things in life with a few rough patches. Figurative language is used near the end of the poem. The hair flapping/ behind you like a/ handkerchief waving goodbye (lines 21-24), represents a simile. As you are reading this line it helps you as the reader see what the author is picturing while writing this poem. The title of this poem makes the reader think the poem would be when a daughter who is an adult leaves home but, Pastan is actually taking an old memory of a day of learning to ride a bike as a