Compare and contrast the poems 'Death of a Son', 'Mid-Term Break' and 'Remember' - What approaches do the writers take on the subject and what techniques do they use to convey their message?

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Compare and contrast the poems 'Death of a Son', 'Mid-Term Break' and ‘Remember’. What approaches do the writers take on the subject and what techniques do they use to convey their message?

Think about

  • Structure

  • Narrator and their characters

  • Poetic techniques

  • Tone and mood

  • Setting in time

Death of a Son by Jon Silkin

This poem is a noting down, by Silkin, of his son's death, which comes from Silkin's own personal experience. Understandably, because of this, it is an extremely sad and distressing poem. It tells the reader of Silkin's struggle and his son's struggle, in what may have easily been the most difficult period of both their lives. Certainly for the son - although as a note at the start of the poem is tells the reader that the son was only one year old.

Following the theme of sadness in this poem comes the awareness that fathers are not supposed to suffer the loss of a son, and for that reason there isn't a word to describe it - not as there is for widows or orphans. Silkin feels the injustice of this strongly.

The first stanza starts off by saying that 'something' was no longer present; that something was missing. However it is unclear whether this 'something' was a burden. Whatever the something was to him, he does miss its presence. This can imply that Silkin, although his child was mentally ill, was a devoted father; there is also the possibility that Silkin did not find the memory of his child fond, but just close and familiar. The child is

'Something like a person: something very like one'

However by saying that Silkin is effectively pointing out that this wasn’t a person. The last short line, ebbing away, is so un-poetic - Silkin not being able to describe his retarded child

'And there was no nobility in it

Or anything like that.'

In the second stanza Silkin goes more in-depth with his narrative, he calls his son 'dumb as stone', and compares him to other children around him in sad contrast. The other children have life, and were happy and normal.

'Something was there like a one-year

Old house, dumb as stone. While the near buildings

Sang like birds and laughed…'

 Here Silkin starts his metaphor of his son as a 'house', as if too painful to remember as a person, and that it happened to him, on his son.

The third stanza is linked from the second by enjambment, linking the silence from one stanza to the next as if the silence is never-ending. Silkin vents his bitter feelings, as the comparison makes him resentful - of what he could have had, and what others have. 'But he / Neither sang nor laughed'. Silkin rants of his son's silence, of the unholiness, of the un-naturalness. He repeats 'silence', almost as if to say the word and hear it, the irony of it.

'…were to have with silence. But he

Neither sang nor laughed. He did not bless silence

Like bread, with words.

He did not forsake silence.'

The fourth stanza is the first to bring in the theme of death; the son is not really alive now. After all, what signs are they that he is alive? Silkin likens his "house" to a 'house in mourning' - windows closed, blinds pulled shut; no response. Again comes the comparison of the other "houses" - Silkin's quiet anger at his injustice surfacing once more.

The next stanza is a short 2 line one, where the metre breaks down. It appears as a deformed line. It explains Silkin’s muted obsession with his son's silence

'And the breathing silence neither

Moved nor was still'

Silkin finds the silence unnerving, and he doesn’t understand it. The child’s movements are not normal movements; everything about his child is strange and eerie.

Silkin tries to explain his feelings about this in the next 2 stanzas. He is saying that he has seen normal "houses", but his "house” can't be normal, isn't normal; its not made of what houses are made of.

‘I have seen stones: I have seen brick

But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone’

Silkin cannot penetrate this wall of ‘stone’ that his child has

‘. . . a house of flesh and blood/ With a flesh of stone

And bricks for blood’

 Silkin makes his conscious effort to comprehend his "house" but finds words unable to express how he is silent, and why – his state.

In the last three stanzas something new enters into the poem. Silkin notices something different in his otherwise unresponsive abnormal “house”

'Something was shining is his quiet,

This was different this was altogether something else'

This is the first glimmerings of peace, 'something shining in his quiet', there is a change in the child, and it becomes almost a child again - no more metaphors, although still Silkin cannot bear to talk of 'him' as a child, or name him, still using only pronouns. Silkin somehow intuitively knows that this change is the peace of release from the constant toil of life and consequently death.

'Though he never spoke, this

Was something to do with death'

Nothing was ever said between them, but Silkin still knows, as a father can know his child. However when father and son finally bond, it’s to share the same realisation – of the son’s death. For both, this is liberation - the son from the struggle of living and the father the burden of this son. What's more is that Silkin has forgotten of his jealousy of the other children; at this moment it is only him and his son, no comparisons needed.

The second last stanza changes again (the change in the son and father bringing about this change) – the addition of an extra, fifth line. Something more has been added, everything is as it should be for that moment. Then the strong irony comes into play; as this moment of magic, that most fathers take for granted, is moving and beautiful, and it is their union over the son’s death.

This stanza describes the death of the son, and through the bond that both share for this moment, it is still heart rendering and sad. The silence that was the son stops, and they share their communication. The son looks, his response coming through, and he sees. Then one last reminder of those surrounding him, loud and ringing, they do not matter anymore and no longer concern Silkin.

'…The silence rose and became still

The look turned to the outer place and stopped,

With the birds still shrilling around him'

'And as if he could speak'

'As if he could speak', and at that moment Silkin feels he can and understands for the first time. With that, understanding passed between them, and the stanza passing on to the last one, the son "asks for forgiveness" as only he can, and dies.

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'He turned over as if he could be sorry for this

And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,

                                And he died.'

The most powerful line in the poem being only three words – three very simple and detached words capturing the final end of the poem. Everything else a preparation and build-up for this moment, the moment being inevitable.

The structure of the poem is strange, in that when looked at the stanzas appear to be four ...

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