The imagery used by William Wordsworth in ‘The Affliction of Margaret’ is quite depressing. He uses many images of darkness, which leads the reader to link this with themes of death and evil. It has a very negative effect; “Was ever darkness like to this?” This imagery analyses the Mother’s fears, she is worried about his whereabouts and what might have happened to him. This quote suggests that her fears are greater than darkness.
This contrasts with the other poems ‘Follower’ and ‘Catrin’ as the imagery has a more positive effect. For example in Seamus Heaney’s ‘Follower’; “His shoulders globed like a full sail strung”. This simile builds up a very powerful impression of the Father. His son admires him wholey and we should also be impressed by his strength and experience.
In ‘Catrin’ Gillian Clarke shows a great sense of love for her daughter, yet emphasises the distance between them; “The tight red rope of love.” The red rope described, symbolises the umbilical cord and blood, which supply a baby with life. This creates the bond between mother and child, but however ‘tight’ the umbilical cord may be eventually the bond is broken when the cord is to be cut.
William Wordsworth uses a lot of repetition of the Mother’s fears in his poem,’ The Affliction of Margaret’. This emphasises her loneliness and unstable state of mind. It is implied that she is frightened of everything.
In ‘Follower’ Seamus Heaney uses a lot of alliteration, for example; “sail strung”, emphasises the strength of the Father. He also uses the reader’s sense of sound to portray the sounds of the Father working in the fields; “Plod”. This is onomatopoeia and you can hear the movements of the Father as he walks through the muddy fields with his plough and horses. This emphasises that the son thinks very highly of his Father and is determined to pursue the family skill when he becomes an adult.
‘Catrin’ is similar in that the mother talks of great love for her daughter, although she is constantly aware of the tension in their relationship. There is a mid-rhyme, which highlights this; “Brown hair….defiant glare”. Gillian Clarke wants there to always be an unbreakable bond between her and her daughter, but the more she tries to grasp her daughter’s affections the more she drives her daughter away, transforming the daughter into her own person and causing her to be defiant of her mother’s orders.
The structure of the 3 poems is very different. In ‘The Affliction of Margaret’ there are numerous stanzas, based on the same worries and fears of the Mother. This can sometimes become quite confusing and reflects the Mother’s confused state of mind. There is also a rhyme every other line for the first four lines of every stanza and also in the last three lines, for example “dream” and “scream”, and “blind” and “kind”. These are completely different ideas and the rhyming effect emphasises this.
In ‘Follower’ the first three stanzas concentrate on the strength of the Father. This then followed by two stanzas in which the son states his eagerness to continue work in his father’s footsteps. There is then a complete change of tone in the last stanza as the events move from the past into the present day. This is similar to the tone of ‘The Affliction of Margaret’, because it can be seen that the son no longer appears proud of his Father’s work but instead annoyed with him. Furthermore, it suggests a role reversal has taken place, because the son appears to be the powerful leader of the relationship and the Father is the weak follower, stumbling in his son’s path.
Like ‘Follower’, the structure of ‘Catrin’ takes the form of an account written from the past into the present. The Mother is looking back into the past and delving into memories of her daughter’s birth and childhood and how she was dependant on her Mother to look after and protect her, through to the present day, where the daughter no longer wants to be cared for by her mother and wants to be independent leaving her Mother feeling lost without her.
In conclusion, it is my opinion that there are many similarities and differences between the poems by Wordsworth, Heaney and Clarke. For example there is a contrast between the melancholy tone of William Wordsworth’s ‘The Affliction of Margaret’ and the more optimistic and cheerful tone in Seamus Heaney’s ‘Follower’ and Gillian Clarke’s ‘Catrin’. However, they all share a common theme; that the parents need their children to feel a sense of belonging and security. Therefore creating any distance in the relationship however great or small can put strain on the bond between the parent and child.