This shows how different the two poems are as this quote from ‘Old Man, Old Man’ shows how senility has affected this old man’s mind frame as he is beginning to forget things, also he is becoming less and less able to perform simple tasks such as remembering where things had been left. The quotation below is saying of how he used to be a D.I.Y. expert and knew where everything was and that now he knows nothing about D.I.Y or where his possessions are.
‘I’ve lost my hammer’
I think Jenny Joseph is describing a woman of about fifty years of age who fears the fact that she will be old and I think she is also perhaps afraid of old age and the realisation of that it will happen eventually it’s just when, that she doesn’t care about it to much as it has been expressed in the poem.
I think her thoughts on old age are ignorant as she obviously hasn’t experienced it yet, I think she won’t behave in this way she’s just trying to comfort herself
‘Gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings’
S.H 07-02-02
I would imagine that Fanthorpe is writing about a man of eighty years who has (unlike the lady in ‘Warning’) already suffered the terrible aging process causing his ways of forgetfulness and also his senile antics. This is precisely what the lady in ‘Warning’ does not want to happen, as she describes constantly on how she will try to battle the terrifying aging process.
‘But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers’
The lady thinks that this is how she is expected to act at the moment as she describes here how she should act to ‘set a good example for the children’ but I think that she says this with a great deal of sarcasm as if she won’t even think about acting this way. I think that this quote insinuates that the woman is looking back at how she has seen people acting in this normal way and she wants to break the mould and be completely different from the normal old age woman. I also think that these thoughts and ideas have been conjured up in her head because of maybe a ‘mid-life-crisis’ or maybe she has experienced a relative or a friend reacting badly to the curse of time. I think her thoughts are just her way of compromising with her fears of reality or is just trying to make herself feel better about growing old.
From reading these two poems I have realised that there are two main ways that you can approach old age both ways are expressed in these poems. In ‘Old Man, Old Man’ the point of view expressed is one of accepting old age as it comes and letting it take its viscous toll on you.
Whereas ‘Warning’ expresses another completely different example of this process, this one shows how the woman wants to try not to let aging affect her try to have fun and take each day as it comes, and unlike the other one she’s aware of how she could end up if she goes without a fight but if she puts up a battle against the process of time she will be able to go the way she wants to ‘Out with a bang’.
