Preview

Expliction of the poem FEAR

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
720 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Expliction of the poem FEAR
My Explication of the poem Fear by Gabriela Mistral

I am going to explain to you the poem “Fear” by Gabriela Mistral. Her poem is about her fear of society changing the ways of her daughter, turning her into an independent adult. She fears that her daughter will change from the innocent young girl that she is, into a not so innocent, careless adult who doesn’t need her mother’s love. As the speaker’s daughter grows up she wants her to stay the same, always be good and careful in life, staying by her mother’s side. Each stanza represents a different time period in the daughters life starting with infancy and ending with adult. Throughout the poem she is referring to society as “them.”
During this poem a mother has great fear of very many changes, her daughter growing up frightens her though it must happen. This is a personal story about her own feelings toward her daughter’s life. The main idea is that she worries her daughter will grow up too fast and not need her own mother. The speaker uses a special word, eaves, meaning lower edges of a roof to define where a swallow (her daughter) would lay in the night. She also uses the terms swallow, princess, and queen to symbolize her daughter growing from a sweet, needy infant to an independent, careless adult.
The first stanza starts by saying “I don’t want them to turn my daughter into a swallow,” this refers to the infancy stage and is repeated in line 7. The speaker, her mother, uses the term swallow to represent her daughter growing up and leaving, no longer wanting to be at home, in her nest with her mother. She then says “She would fly far away into the sky and never fly again to my straw bed, or she would nest in the eaves where I could not comb her hair.” This shows that she is fearful that once her daughter grows into an adult she will not come back to see her, she will not want to visit. She will grow too independent to need her mother’s love, her mother’s touch. The second stanza begins with “I

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Bruce Dawe - Americanized

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Stanza three again shows doubtfulness about the mother's love. We see how the mother locks her child in because she fears the modern world. She sees the world as dangers and especially fears men. Her fear of men is emphasized by the italics used. In the final line of the stanza, the mother puts her son on a plastic pot. This is somewhat symbolic of the consumeristic society i.e. manufactured and cheap.…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fear In Macbeth

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the play, Macbeth is driven to the extreme in order to further himself socially and his power, yet in the end it haunts him and tears him apart with consequences. His excessive amounts of greed blind him from being aware of the real danger. His colleagues now look down on him and are concerned for the people of his country, saying, “Bleed, bleed, poor country: Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, For goodness dare not check thee. Wear thy thou wrongs… For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp, And the rich East to boot” (Shakespeare, IV.iii.32-39). During this discussion between Macduff and Malcolm, they express their concern and fear for the future of Macbeth’s country. Neither of these noble men trust Macbeth after the transgressions…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham is a science fiction novel which takes place in the future, years after a nuclear holocaust has devastated large areas of the world. The story focuses on the lives of a group of telepathic children, who are forced to flee to “The Fringes, a place where whoever is not the “True Image of God”, is a mutant. The text is written in first person and narrated by David Strorm, one of the telepathic children. It follows David’s life and the events he encounters. “The Chrysalids” shows the distinct separation between what is normal and what is abnormal. Wyndham explores many themes throughout the text, the main one being fear. “Most people are motivated by fear”, in “The Chrysalids.” This essay will explore the theme of fear with the different groups and important characters, shaping the theme of fear present in the text. These groups are the ‘Waknuk Community’, who believe they are the “true image of God.” The ‘Telepathic children’, who runaway or risk their abilities being found out and ‘The Fringes’ people, known as the ‘Mutants’, who are the one’s with deviations.…

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fear: the mere sight of the word makes some of us cringe. It is a feeling we have all dealt with at one time or another. Fear is the quintessential human emotion. Some people live lives devoid of joy, happiness, and pleasure, but no one escapes the experience of fear and fear’s companion, pain. We are born in fear and pain. Our lives are profoundly shaped by them, as well as our efforts to avoid them.” It is something that we first experience as children, and are conditioned to respond to in many different ways. Some of us live in constant fear; of accidents, of bad people doing us harm, or of physical ailments. Others simply take things as they come in life, whether they are good or bad things. In the dictionary, fear is defined as: "a feeling of agitation or anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger.  That is a rather ominous definition. Fear can also refer to general anxiety, as in "fear of speaking in public  or "fear of open areas . These fears arise not necessarily from a present or imminent threat, but rather a perceived threat, which to some can be just as scary. For most people fear is an unpleasant feeling and it is…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The remaining lines of the poem started out with poet's attitude shifting towards sympathetic/empathetic, when they were playful and unaware of the characters to begin with. The shift starts on line 13 with the word "but.." which indicated the child was upset from not able to cure their curiosity or the poet was trying to suggest was that the child was upset from not letting their caring personality portray through. "..in the fear that mother love wraps you in" is when the poet uses personification to…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    These include reprimanding a child with non-verbal and verbal cues to guide them through life. In the second paragraph, the poet talks of hearing voices of the murdered children. One can interpret this along with ghosts and the long time implications of long-term decision. The woman can forget the actions, but in some way, they will come back to haunt the individual. In this same paragraph, one finds references to the rites of passage that a child undergoes. They include love, relationships, marriage, and heartache. Again the author uses expressions of regret to show that a woman who aborts a child can expect to miss the rites of passage that a child goes through when transiting from childhood to adulthood. It is every mother’s dream to see a son or daughter walk down the church aisle with a loved one to signify the first step in starting a family and bringing forth another generation into the world. The tumults, aches and cries that the poet describes show that life is worth it. Women should not look at child rearing as a burden, but a duty to prepare a young one for the rigors of…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The tone of this poem seems to be semi joyful, and familiar in the beginning, of a mother telling about her children being born and nursed with pain and care. In line four, the speaker tells of sparing nothing in order to take care of her young; showing how deep her love is for them. At first it sounds joyful as she speaks of how her young “Mounted the trees, and learned to sing” (Bradstreet) this line gives the sense of joy that comes with learning, nature and singing. The tone then changes, while the speaker is telling of her oldest bird growing up and taking flight, she becomes very sad…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The emotion of fear is so powerful that it can motivate an individual to do the unimaginable. In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, fear is the driving force for murder, escape, and madness. There are three types of fear that are exhibited in this tragic Shakespearean play. They are the fears based on morals, the fears based on physical harm, and the fears based on selfishness. The purpose of this essay is to give evidence of the various types of fears that certain characters in Macbeth have acted on.…

    • 1274 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Construction of Fear

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Barry Glassner gives several different constructions on how we can transform, exaggerate, and invent fears. Fear is defined as a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by present or imminent danger. But Barry Glassner defines it as constructed through efforts to protect against it. Society as a whole uses fear to profit financially, politically, or media driven by journalist. These three profits show how transforming, exaggerating, and inventing fear has shaped society.…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Author to Her Book” It is immediate that the reader knows that a woman and a mother wrote this piece. “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth did’st by my side remain…” This sentence sets the stage for everything that would come next about her from staying by her side while children, to going out into the world with friends, and becoming adults and moving out of the house. Threw the middle of the poem, lines 5-10, you can tell that she is unhappy with her children for what is unclear but “brat” and “cast thee by as one unfit for light” can’t be a good sign. The last two lines though you can tell she will always love her children but she has to let them go. For a mother in that time period, especially a mother of 8, you can really get the sense of how much of an up and down ride I was to raise so many children and all the responsibility’s that when along with it.…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The second major chapter in the book was “Fear”. In the 2nd chapter of Disinherited, Thurman takes up the issue of fear. In his 1940’s context, he is speaking about Jim Crow segregation. He argues that segregation is a form of organized violence against the soul of the disinherited. This also has a connection back to Jesus where he was in the segregated minority. People have always lived under the culture of fear, and it characterizes our American culture today. In our society fear is everything, left fears right, rich fears poor, human beings fear the things they don’t understand. As readers it really seems apparent that Thurman is pointing out his own connection to his theme. That he too is apart of the disinherited, and that his own point…

    • 282 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Scarlet Letter English

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Identify and explain an emotion that Bradstreet expresses in her poem that any mother might have. Fear of how her child is going to turn out after being isolated for childhood.…

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Explication of a Poem

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ted Kooser, the thirteenth Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner, is known for his honest and accessible writing. Kooser’s poem “A Spiral Notebook” was published in 2004, in the book Good Poems for Hard Times, depicting a spiral notebook as something that represents more than its appearance. Through the use of imagery, diction, and structure, Ted Kooser reveals the reality of a spiral notebook to be a canvas of possibilities and goes deeper to portray the increasing complexities in life as we age.…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    . In the poem it says “Children sold away from me.” In the poem, it is talking about her children being sold and causing her family to be split apart.…

    • 175 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    We tend to forget that our actions have consequences, but our subconscious remembers and tries to warn us by using a sensitive memory, usually one with a massive amount of fear, to help us perceive what will happen if we keep going. My subconscious chose the memory when I almost got my brother killed.…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics