|
|
Love Has No Boundaries Hunter says that "Comparing poems on the same subject or with a similar theme or tone can lead to a clearer understanding of each individual poem and can refine our responses to the subtleties of individual differences" (42-43). There are slight variations of tone in the poems, “Pause” and “Leavetaking.” In “Pause,” the child is coming home from kindergarten and filling the house with her laughter. There is a sense of joy, and the child’s presence alone illuminates her father. In “Leavetaking,” the son is venturing out on his own for the first time, and saying goodbye to his father. He is outgrowing his childhood home, and is on his way out into the real world. The two poems vary in the directions that the characters lives are leading them, but are consistent in the love each father has for their child. The author of “Leavetaking” is able to clearly express to his audience the strong love that the father and son have for one another. This is evident through the diction that the author uses. Words such as awkwardness, alone, and anxious describe the way that the son is feeling before his train departs from the station. When the son’s train does actually begin to pull away, both the father and son don’t want to believe that this moment has actually come. As his face is “pressed against the windowpane” of the train for one last glance of his dad, and as his father “cranes to defy the disappearing train,” the love that is shared between a father and son becomes truly evident.
|
