The Parent/Child relationship is a bond of unquestionable love and unity. Discuss how far you consider this statement to be true in the light of 2 Heaney, 1 Gillian Clarke and 2 poems from Pre-1914 Poetry Bank.
The hardest part of raising a child is like teaching them to ride a bicycle. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realisation that this support is no longer wanted by the child- hits hard. This connection and urge to keep holding on is tied between the parent and child with the “Red rope of love”. Four poets who explore the immense poignancy of the Parent/Child relationship are, Seamus Heaney: ‘Digging’, and ‘Follower’, Gillian Clarke: ‘Catrin’, and William Yeats: ‘Song of the Old Mother’.
Seamus Heaney, in the poem ‘Digging’ unlike ‘Catrin’ and ‘Song of the Old Mother’, writes in the position of the child: reminiscing the time when he looked up to his father and grandfather. Although Heaney is guilt-felt; that he didn’t live up the family tradition of becoming a farmer, he feels adequate and tries to justify his own job. Similarly, in ‘Follower’ Heaney evokes watching and admiring his father when working. The title is both literal and metaphorical as to say Heaney ‘followed’ his father as a young child. However, Heaney ends the poem stating that his father is now ‘stumbling’. Gillian Clarke on the other hand, portrays the struggles between a mother and daughter from the point of conception to separation at teenage; whilst William Yeats writes in the place of a mother who grows “feeble and cold” because of her care-free children whose days go “over in idleness”.