Nor does he find comfort or refuge in his mother, who lies “in his rivals fast embrace”, once he enters their room. The description of his father as a contender for his mother’s love shows how he is realising that his mother does not exist solely for him. Dramatic irony is used at this point, where Harwood communicates directly to the reader that “love’s proud executants played from a score/no child could read or realise.”, showing how the child is misunderstanding the sight before him.
By the end of the poem, the child has gone through these changes of self-realisation, and has lost some of his innocent naivity. The loss of light is symbolic for the most significant change he has undergone – his increased understanding regarding his relationship with his parents. The scarf represents his innocence and his childhood, and at the end of the poem is “crumpled”, discarded. The boy has had to leave behind the purity and innocence of childhood and undergo the painful beginning of maturity, as shown in his nightmares that progress from meaningless monsters to devilish skeletons dancing a “malignant ballet” as orchestrated by his father. The morning comes again, however, and we are shown the inevitability of this self-change, and how life continues, with the ‘resurrected sun’ that mocks the child, winking at him from the jar.
In “Father and Child”, the two poems show us two types of self-change. The first, shown in “Barn Owl”, is similar to the change shown in the aforementioned poem – a life-changing experience. The second, however, “Nightfall”, in conglomeration with the first, shows how self-change can also result from the gradual passage of time.
In Barn Owl, the young “horney fiend” sees her father as an “old No-Sayer”, and he views her as “a child obedient, angel-mild”. She proves the contrary by stealing his gun while he sleeps, and shooting a barn owl returning from a night of hunting. The death of the owl unfolds in a very different manner to the “clean and final” death she expected. Shocked by the gruesome nature of death, shown in words such as “obscene”, “dribbled”, “cruelty”, “wrecked” and “hobbled”, she transforms from seeing herself as a “master of life and death” to a “lonely child”, afraid of the gun she held. While, in the beginning, she believed herself justified to judge and punish the bird for hunting, after the gruesome death she realises the evil of what she has done. Her father teaches her of the responsibility accompanying the power she has but is afraid of, symbolised by the gun, which she drops to the ground. He tells her to “end what you have begun”. Her father comforts her as she cries for her newfound and irreversible understanding of death that ultimately changes her out look on life, and therefore, her self.
This transformation, like “A Glass Jar”, is caused by a significant, life-changing event. This is one of the two main forms of self-change, and it is therefore necessary for it to be represented in the anthology. The other form is that change resulting from growth and maturity. “A Glass Jar”, in conglomeration with the second poem of Father and Child, shows this self-change with clarity. Forty years later, there has been a role reversal – where her father was once a strong, powerful figure in her life, age has now reduced him to a “stick-thin comforter”. This oxymoron shows how her father has aged, with this image furthered by sentences such as “Your passionate face is grown to ancient innocence.”. Now she looks after him, holding his hand and leading him, blind, on a walk, where she points out to him simplicities that he would have pointed out to her when she was an infant.
Her understanding of death has also matured, as she sees her father’s death as inevitable, positive and timely completion, shown in the lines “Old King, your marvelous journey’s done.”. This upcoming death differs greatly from the gruesome death of the owl – rather, it is a more glorified, calm and controlled death that Harwood alludes to, consistent with the tone of the poem, which differs greatly from the jerky, unbalanced and dramatic tone of the first poem. This shows how both, especially Harwood, have matured over time, both physically and mentally.
Nightfall is a far more reflective poem, with references to time and transience, showing the most important change that has been achieved by Harwood’s narrator – the maturity of experience, described in the last sentence “the child once quick to mischief, grown to learn what sorrows, in the end, no words, no tears can mend.”. This illustrates how knowledge and pressures gained from maturity can result in change, also showed in “Sky High” by Hannah Robert. The narrator, as a small child, climbs up to the “skeleton thin” clothes line, and swings upside down. She describes the experience “The earth spins below me. I am flying.” This gives a sense of freedom and carelessness which is no longer experienced by the more mature narrator, who no longer has to climb to reach the more “age warped” line, but can no longer swing as there are “too many things tying (me) to the ground.” This shows how aging is a self-change which results in an accumulation of responsibilities, and a lack of care-freeness and simple naivity.
It has thus been shown that there are two main types of self-change – those irreversible transformations resulting from life-changing experiences, welcome or unwelcome, and the changes resulting from maturity and growth of experience over a longer period of time. In creating an anthology truly representative to both types of self-change, it is necessary to represent them equally, in the poems “A Glass Jar”, “Barn Owl” and “Nightfall” by Gwen Harwood, as well as the short story “Sky High” by Hannah Robert.
