C. Day-Lewis talks about how he is dealing with past memories, but these are painful memories. His relationship with his son is one of parental responsibility, and his images suggest a deep love and concern for him. Like in the ‘Spared’ poem, they both have strong relationships with the person of which is being spoken about. “How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go.” (Stanza: 4 Line: 4&5). C Lewis starts out by using the image of “leaves just turning”, which are a reference to change of his son becoming a man. The author mentions the son “Drifting away” (Stanza : 1 Line: 5), “Eddying away” (Stanza: 3 Line: 1), and ‘Walking away’ (Stanza: 2&4 Line: 2&4), clearly trying to make it noticeable and emphasising that his son is moving away and he doesn’t want this to happen. The poem is not very clear from the beginning of who this poem is about, but as it reaches the second stanza, he begins to talk about “I can see you walking away from me towards the school” (Stanza: 2 Line: 1&2) and then “Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem” (Stanza: 3 Line: 2), where this gives the perception of it being his child. The boy’s father is concerned for his son “I can see, you walking away from me towards the school, with the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free” (Stanza: 2 Line: 1,2 & 3). I feel that by using shorter lines and the rhyming technique used, it gives the poem a powerful tone. The poet then concludes by saying that his love for his son is proven by allowing him to pursue selfhood.
The poem ‘The sun has burst the sky’, which is written by Jenny Joseph, is about how much the person this is written about loves their partner. It compares with the other two poems because this too is about loving somebody very close. The poem has more comparisons with ‘Spared’ because they are both about a partner, and contrasts with ‘Walking away’ because of how happy the poem is compared to the ups and downs of happiness in the ‘walking away’ poem. When first reading this poem, it is quite clear that this is just another love poem. This is demonstrated by the author writing “I love you” numerous times in the poem. “The Sun has burst in the sky, Because I love you.” (Stanza: 1 Line: 1&2) shows how intense the love is, by saying the sun bursts in the sky because of how much she loves them. The poem seems to be written in two different styles, the first and third stanzas are written in Haiku, and the third and fourth stanzas appear to be free verse. This poem compares with ‘walking away’ because the authors in both poems relate to nature such as when Jenny Joseph writes, “The sea laps the great rocks” (Stanza: 2 Line: 1), and when Lewis writes “A sunny day with leaves just turning” (Stanza: 1 Line:2). The poem ‘spared’ and ‘the sun had burst the sky’ are both written by females, compared to ‘walking away which is written by a male.
The short story of which I have chosen is also written by a male, James Joyce, this story is called ‘Eveline’. This short story was written in 1914 and is set around the same period of time. Just like the poems, this story is also about love, but is about family issues, like in the poem ‘walking away, and has love of a partner, as in ‘Spared’ and ‘the sun has burst the sky’. Eveline is a lot like most of the young women in early twentieth century. Due to her mother passing away, she is expected to take care of her home. The author, James Joyce, writes that Eveline struggled to keep "her promise to keep the home together as long as she could," a promise she made to her mother while on her deathbed. As in all of the poems, the person whom the story is about is concerned for loved ones, but unlike Day-Lewis’s son, Eveline’s brothers are beaten by their father, and it continued until they were old enough to retaliate. Eveline's duties of doing housework were oppression by the lack of women's liberation in 1914. Joyce writes "She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly”. It is not clear whom Eveline is taking care of, but it does state that she is unhappy in her assumed position of a housewife without a husband. Eveline's planned to leave her current life of a homemaker and go to Buenos Aires with her lover Frank, she feels that the only way to leave her life as a homemaker is only possible by marrying him, the story does mention “proposal”, but it’s not explained what is meant by this. Joyce writes "She was about to explore another life with Frank," and "She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Aires where he had a home waiting for her." This compares with ‘spared’ which they speak about how they could not leave their loved one.
The short story ‘Eveline’ is very descriptive, at the beginning of the story James Joyce writes “She heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavements and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses.”, This compares with the poems ‘The sun has burst the sky’ and ‘Walking away’, and how they describe their surroundings. The short story appears to reflect on life memories whilst she is sitting in front of her window, and doesn’t contain much action throughout. This compares with the poem ‘Walking away’ which also contain reflections of their memories. In ‘Walking away’, Lewis writes “It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day” (Stanza:1 Line:1) and “Since I watched you play your first game of football” (Stanza: 1 Line: 3&4) this appears to be a memory. This short story clearly states that the family live in Ireland, unlike all three of the poems which do not seem to give any ideas of what part of the world they are living in. Although ‘Spared’ gives the impression that she could possibly be American by mentioning how it could have been her in the twin towers, it never mentions where she is actually from. The short story ‘Eveline’ appears to be the oldest of the written texts, it was published in 1914, and ‘The sun has burst the sky’ was published in 1932, which compares with roughly the same time period as ‘Eveline’. ‘Walking away’ was published in 1962, and ‘Spared’ being the most recent of the texts was published in 2001.
It appears that all of the relationships within all of the texts appear to be different, although they all seem to be involving either a partner or a relative, they are all of different times and have different issues. Such as Wendy Cope speaks about how much she loves her partner but has a sad tone, to Jenny Joseph experiencing the same love for her partner but with a joyous tone, then to the family issues in the ‘Walking away’ poem. All the issues in the poems appear to link with the short story, the short story has issues concerning family and partner relationships, but doesn’t appear to have a happy tone throughout.
References:
Cope, W (2001) – ‘Spared’, English anthology.
Day-Lewis, C (1962) – ‘Walking away’, English anthology.
Joseph, J (1932) – ‘The sun has burst the sky’, English anthology.
Joyce, J (1914) – ‘Eveline’, English anthology.
