Discuss Harrison's exploration of family relationships

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Discuss Harrison’s Explorations of Family relationships

A lot of Tony Harrison’s poems have a connection with family life and particularly in some of his poems he talks about his family in an under covered way. There are a few poems in particular that touch upon the subject of family relationships and especially Harrison’s view on family. The poems are “Book Ends” I and II, “A Good Read” and “Bringing up”. In all the poems the writer is expressing how he felt about his family, his relationship with his father and mother and how his mother has affected the family when she was alive and after she has died.

The poems “Book Ends” I and II both are about how the relationship between Harrison and his father changed after his mother died. From the title of the poems the reader can gather the metaphor of the father and the son being the book ends “You are like book ends, the pair of you.” Although from the poem we find out that the two of them are quite different, they are also quite similar because the book ends also come in a pair. The metaphor can be developed by saying that the pages of the book are the mother because that is the only thing that holds the book ends together.

The poem also illustrates the sadness of both the son and the father because of the mother’s death “we chew it slowly”. Apart form saddens this line shows the reader that they are savouring the memory of their beloved mother and wife. In the next line the writer is saying how “scared of bed” he is because they are afraid of the thought that their mother has died. Harrison emphases on their difference by saying “We never could talk much, and now don’t try” because talking establishes the real difference between them although they are a son and father.

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The more and more the reader and realises the main theme of the poem that Harrison has established, the more the poem starts to develop as a sort of a piece of writing expressing how bad his relationship with his father is “A night you need my company to pass”. At this moment the father needs his son because he is sad and even though the writer is quite sceptical towards his relationship with his father, Harrison needs his father because his grief is not less.

Harrison says that his father’s life is “all shattered into smithereens”, but here ...

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