Gadi.
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 Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:31 pm Post subject: Essay about poem |
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This is due on Wednesday. Please tell me if it's good or not!
Julia’s Blossoming
Every parent must let go of their children. They struggle, they cry, they fight—but in the end, the child always leaves, whether the parents like it or not. It is the entire family that fights in the child’s treacherous expedition into adulthood. In his poem For Julia, In the Deep Water, Morris demonstrates his belief that danger plagues the hero’s journey. Hazards pop up every single step of the way, and there is no method of avoiding them. Although growing up is incredibly hard for adolescents, it might even be more dangerous and terrifying for their parents.
The teenage years are a transition for every child. They must learn to adjust, to develop, to live in the real world. They must leave the protective embrace of their parents, spread their wings, and fly off. Of course, the dangers are unsurpassed, petrifying, and hard to overcome—that is the reason why one has to adjust. In the poem, the father, who narrates the poem, says:
“You are over your head.
Screaming, you are learning
Your way towards us.”
This shows the dangers of the teenage years, as Julia is covered with water over the head. Even though she is in extreme danger, Julia still keeps on learning, walking towards her parents. Even as she is struggling, Julia learns to swim. Teens can overcome the hardships that life throws at them.
While Julia is suffering through her maturity, Morris has a difficult time being “merciless for your [Julia’s] sake”. Being a parent sometimes obliges to create pain for the child in the process of learning. It might be even more painful for the parent to watch their child struggle through the hurdles of reality. When Morris writes “Only your mother is drowning forever in the thin air”, he alludes to oxygen: even though we need oxygen to survive, it is also what ages us. Julia’s mother cannot bear the pain that she must go through, watching her daughter suffer while learning to swim. The last line, “We live in what kills us”, references to the joys and miseries of parents. It’s true, children are enjoyable to raise, they are the parents’ dreams—but releasing them into the world is a heartache for every parent.
From surrendering his daughter to the kindergarten instructor to observing her first swim lesson to clapping at her wedding ceremony, Morris might have had more trouble than Julia during her blossoming. In his poem, he suggests that a parent’s journey through their child’s development might be even harder than the child’s journey. A chick must leave the shielding arms of the nest and fly into the distance. It only looks down, underneath, where it can see all the wonders of the world—the fields of green, the oceans blue, the purple mountains. But it is the mother bird that watches from the nest, far away, at the eagle circling her chick from high above. And she knows, every parent knows: a journey is not a journey without barriers. |
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Leja
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| Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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on formatting: you should put poetry titles between quotation marks, I believe, or possibly italicize them.
In general, I thought it was well written. The first paragraph was especially nice because you began with an ~anecdote (I think that's the word?) and then immediately connected it/tied it back to the poem. However, I don't know what the assignment was? If the assignment was to write a general response to the essay, then I think it works; if the assignment was more along the lines of analysis, I think you spend too much time talking in generalities:
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A chick must leave the shielding arms of the nest and fly into the distance. It only looks down, underneath, where it can see all the wonders of the world—the fields of green, the oceans blue, the purple mountains. But it is the mother bird that watches from the nest, far away, at the eagle circling her chick from high above. And she knows, every parent knows: a journey is not a journey without barriers.
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additionally, if this is the case, it would be helpful to incorporate more quotes from the poem.
good luck on the assignment; PM me if you have any questions,
-melia |
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