Father to Son Analysis

Let’s face it; the generation gap is a two-sided fact instead of one. It is a fact that
every generation has to go through. Whether you are elder to your sister or younger
to your brother, the clash of the generation gap continues. However, in this
poem, ‘Father to Son’, the poet has portrayed the generation gap between a father
and his son. The poem basically brings forth a father’s illusions towards his son. The
father is seen as a helpless human being who, since his son’s childhood, has been
able to understand his son’s emotional growth.

While the father finds fault in his own son, it is the father who is actually blamed.
When the father shows his incapability to understand his son, he, at the same time,
reveals several unknown facts about his son. This makes the situation of lack of
understanding more ironic. The very irony raises questions about the father’s integrity
and ingenuity.

Lines 1-6
I do not understand this child
(…)
He was when small. Yet have I killed
In this first stanza of the poem, ‘Father to Son’, the poet shows the father saying that
he has not succeeded in understanding his son because he himself could not grow up
with his son. This might be because when the son was growing differently, the father
might have been busy with his chores, and would have kept himself aloof from the
changes taking place in the outer world.

The narrow-mindedness of the father might have stopped him from understanding the
changes his son would have been experiencing. But now, the father, having failed to
comprehend the height of his son’s emotional growth, is making an attempt to
understand him as a child instead of trying to know the changing world wherein his
son is growing up.

However, the type of relationship the father now wants to develop with his son will do
more harm than good for the father will always think that his son is still a little child
and is so far not in such a condition when he is able to understand his actual person.
Lines 6-10
Yet have I killed
(…)
Of understanding in the air.
Let’s face it; every father wants to design his child as per his own wish and desire, but
it goes astray and becomes what he wants. Similarly, in this second, the father thinks
that when he grew the seed of his son, he expected him to grow and take branches
under his shade but now when he has fully grown up it seems that all his expectations
from his son are in vain.

Whatever attempts he made, and whatever pains and protections he took and gave
his son while he was growing are now in vain because, he now wants to design his life
according to his own ways, and does not expect his father to do any kind of
interference in his life. This is really a very pathetic situation for a gardener-like-
father, who made all possible attempts to help his child grow under his shade, but he
now feels left behind because of the generation gap that has come about with the
changing world.

The poet says that the father and son now behave like strangers in their own house,
and it is hardly possible that they would ever be able to understand each other. The
land that once used to belong to the father is now all for the son, who wants to walk,
talk, and live in his own way. There is almost no sign of understanding between both
of them.

Lines 11-13
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.
Silence surrounds us.
In this stanza of ‘Father to Son’, the poet shows the self-centeredness of the father,
who wishes to design his son’s life according to his own, when it comes to sharing
what his son likes and feels pleasure in, he avoids revealing it. Where he once used to
think that his son would not be able to design his life, but it is time to talk about his
son’s preferences he feels ashamed of revealing them.
Here, “what he loves” may mean to the things, trends, and people that his son loves,
and when he says: “I cannot share” it may mean a lot. Yes, it could either be the bad
things or good things of his child or the self-centredness of the father who has now
developed a kind of anger or hatred towards what his son likes.

I am really amazed to read this stanza and when I compare it with the
previous stanzas, it makes me think about the father what he was thinking earlier,
and what he is now doing when it comes to speaking good things about his son. This
stanza also surprises me when “Silence surrounds us”.

How could you avoid talking about the seed that you planted with much care and
cautiousness? Reading through this stanza, it can be realized that all concerns and
worries that the father was showing were nothing but affectation of love towards his
son.

Lines 13-18
I would have
(…)
Shaping from sorrow a new love.
This stanza presents a very different character of the father. Here, the father is shown
in a very callous form, which is not expected from any father on this earth. I am really
surprised to see what the father was in the first and second stanzas, and how he has
become in this stanza. Let’s face it; no father in his senses would ever wish his son to
go away from him and destroy his life.

Why would a father want his son to get lost and struggle for life? But this is the father
who wishes so. He wishes that his son should go away from him and return like the
prodigal son in the Bible. This sort of callousness of the father towards his son shows
that he never loved his son. However, if we take this stanza the other way around, it
will come to our knowledge that the father wishes his son to live and struggle so that
his child can learn about the bitterness of his life, and become mature after having
encountered the ups and downs of life.
He wants his son to return like a mature man full of experiences. This wish of the
father may also be because of the tenderness and innocence that his child is going
through. Anyway, whatever the reason, the father wishes so he must stand by his
child through thick and thin and help him know about life though most of the things
are known by human beings. But if you can share your experience with your child, it
not only helps him go ahead in his/her life but also let me make a wise decision when
it comes to any hardship in life. However, we must know that to err is human.

Lines 18-23
Father and son, we both must live
(…)
Longing for something to forgive.
In this last stanza of ‘Father to Son’, the poet doesn’t present what is expected from
it. It does talk about the reconciliation but doesn’t give any permanent solution. The
father is shown and left lamenting and complaining but doesn’t want to provide any
solution.

Similarly, the son is shown to be ready to reconcile and live again as they used to live
earlier. But this does not end the problem of the generation gap that remains between
the father and son. Therefore, as a sign of reconciliation, each of them welcomes one
another to live friendly.

Some readers may deject and resent this reconciliation solution, but according to me,
there is hardly any solution to the generation gap. There has always been a
generation gap, and it will be so for the future generation. The only thing we can do is
to understand the feelings of each other and the line of respect must not be crossed
and forgotten.

About Elizabeth Jennings

She started her poetry writing career at a very early stage after having been
encouraged by one of her schoolteachers as well as by an uncle, who himself was a
poet. She wrote her earlier poetries on being inspired by Coleridge’s “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner”, G. K. Chesterton’s “Battle of Lepanto”, and then the odes of Keats.

Afterward, Jennings was greatly influenced by the poetries of Edwin Muir and Robert
Frost. In most of Jennings’s poems, there has been strong logic, emotional sensitivity,
an avoidance of decoration, an absence of vagueness, and an eschewing of any
mystification.

She had always taken care of the use of rhyme and meter when it came to the form of
poetry. Her use of words and sentence structure in the poem is very easy to
understand. All her poems were simple and without literary decoration and
pretentiousness in literature.