Extracts from the poem father to son
Answers
The poem presents a father’s illusions about his son. The father feels so helpless because he has not been able to understand his son’s emotional growth for some time, since his childhood. Though the father blames his son, it is the father who is really blamed. The same father who says that he does not understand his son also tells many things about his son for sure. This irony questions the father’s ingenuity and integrity. Who is responsible for the lack of understanding: father or son? The father says it is his son and the son is silent. We have to find out.
1. I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small.
Q. Who have lived in the same house? How long?
Ans. The father and the son have lived in the same house for years.
Q. Why does the father say that he knows nothing of him?
Ans. They live like strangers in the same house. Complete silence surrounds them when they are each other’s presence. That’s why he says that he knows nothing of his son.
Q. What kind of relationship does he want to build up?
Ans. He wants to build up the same kind of relationship as he used to have when his son was a little child.
2. Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there’s no sign
Of understanding in the air.
Q. What does the word ‘seed’ signify?
Ans. The word ‘seed’ here refers to all the hard work the father had to do to bring up the child.
Q. What ‘land’ does the speaker speak of?
Ans. The child’s mind is the land into which the father had tried to sow the seeds of his thoughts.
Q. Why do they speak like strangers?
Ans. They speak like strangers because they have different ways of life and thoughts.
3. This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.
Silence surrounds us.
I would have him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.
Q. What kind of child had he desired to design?
Ans. He had desired to design a child who shared his likes and dislikes.
Q. Why does the speaker say ‘this child’ not ‘my child’?
Ans. Because the child has nothing common with him.
Q. Explain: ‘Silence surrounds us’.
Ans. There is no communication at all between the father and the son. There is complete silence even when they are near each other.
Q. What does the father want his son to do?
Ans. He wants his son to come back to his father’s home.
Q. What is the father prepared to accept?
Ans. He is prepared to accept his son with all his profligacy.
Q. What does the father not want his son to do?
Ans. The father doesn’t want his son to make a new world of his own and move into it.
Q. What would the father do to shape a new love from sorrow?
Ans. He would forgive his son for whatever sorrow he has given him.
4. Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land.
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Q. How does the poet feel when his relationship with his son comes under strain?
Ans. The poet is keen to save the blood ties with his son. He wants the son to return to his old house.
Q. What could be the cause for their distancing from each other?
Ans. The cause of the growing gap between the dad and his son is lack of understanding. Both need each other, yet they turn apart because of ego-problem.
Q. What do both father and son long for?
Ans. They long for an excuse to forgive each other.
Q. What do the words ‘an empty hand’ signify?
Ans. The words ‘an empty hand’ signify that neither father nor the son has gained anything from their state of estrangement. Both of them are empty handed.
Q. What can’t the father understand?
Ans. The father can’t understand why he becomes angry in his grief.
Q. Does the poem have a consistent rhyme scheme?
Ans. Yes, the rhyme scheme in each stanza is abbaba.