Consider How Effectively Elaine Gaston And Maebh McGuckian Portray Relationships In The Poems ‘Seasoned’ And ‘Arranmore’
Relationships are the backbone of human life. We value some more highly than others, but humans would be lost without their relationships with other people. Some people can describe their relationships or put them forward very well. In the following piece of coursework, I am going to look at how well Elaine Gaston and Maebh McGuckian do this and what effect this has on the reader.
Seasoned
This poem, at first, seems to be about Elaine caring for her father as he gets older. Although, from my own knowledge, I know that it is instead about her ill father. In short lines, Gaston tells a reminiscent story of her father’s life before he became ill. This is the irony of the poem. We are told of his strength as he ‘carried fully grown men’ and ‘hauled them up cliffs.’ Gaston emphasises her father’s strength in these lines by using words such as ‘hauled’ or saying that they were ‘fully grown men’. The use of strong words like these is evident throughout the poem, to show how dedicated her father was to both his job as a doctor and his life as a father. Gaston seems to have a lot of admiration and respect to her father, shown by the way she talks about him in the poem. She shows how much of a different person he is by talking of his heroic actions, ranging from mountain rescue to childbirth. She also makes his maternal side evident by telling us how he bathed them on a Saturday night. Gaston’s admiration for her father is also shown in the same stanza, as she talks of how he ‘cycled twenty miles to run a race and won, then cycled twenty home’. This divulge of information shows that she is proud of her father and wants the reader to know that he has always been an amazing person.
