Lucille Clifton's Forgiving My Father

Lucille Clifton’s powerful poem, “forgiving my father” portrays the complexity of family relationships. It illustrates the exacerbating effect of poverty and accord to form forgiveness instead of clinging tightly to the wrongs of the past. The daughter is haunted by her painful memories of her deceased parents specifically the father. The daughter is standing in her father’s grave grieving because she wants to forgive her father, a man who appears to have sorely abused both his wife and daughter

parents for any mistake their parents may have made, however forgiving and forgetting are not the same thing. How parents nurture their children has a significant role in those children’s lives. Children may have forgiven, but forgetting is a not always as easy or even possible. Theodore Roethke’s poem “My papa’s waltz” and Lucille Clifton’s “forgiving my father” recalls the speakers’ respective childhoods and treatment by their father. The poem shows that even through time it is not as always easy

Lucille Clifton’s poem “forgiving my father” is about a girl who has rough moments with her dad and she is not ready to forgive him because she is still recovering from it. She always thinks about how her father’s absence and his lack of care in their life took her mom’s life which caused her mental distress. The father was a danger to the child in many ways. The speaker was mentally distress and financially in debt because of her father. In Sylvia Plath's poem “Daddy” the speaker had different tone

The title of Lucille Clifton's poem, "forgiving my father", seems to be in sharp opposition with the poem itself. There seems to be no forgiveness, yet the title claims that it is there. The entire poem focuses on the debt of the author's father. "it is Friday." she says, "we have come to the paying of the bills." (1-2). But perhaps it doesn't necessarily mean that it is literally Friday, perhaps she just means it is the end, and maybe the debt isn't one of money, but of love. Clifton is using a

Throughout time, fathers and daughters have had special relationships. Some, the best relationship a girl could ever hope for. For others, the relationship is not so great. Sylvia Plath and Lucille Clifton wrote poems describing the darker side of a father-daughter relationship. Their poems demonstrate them in different ways. The poets of “Forgiving my Father” and “Daddy” demonstrate the theme, unresolved anger leads to lifelong bitterness, because both narrators hate their fathers for lying, blame

poems “Forgiving my Father,” and “Daddy,” have some differences but they also have numerous similarities that stick out to their readers. Lucille Clifton’s, “Forgiving my Father,” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” are two unique poems, both based on different scenarios, however, both share an assortment of noteworthy similarities. One similarity between “Forgiving my Father,” and “Daddy,” is the obvious hatred towards a father figure, shared between both authors. In the poem “Forgiving my Father,” Clifton

undeniable that putting two works into conversation with each other can have several advantages. For example, in the poems “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, and Lucille Clifton’s “forgiving my father” they both portray their childhood memories that aren 't so picture perfect. While these poems highlight the wrongdoings of their father’s, in the end they both end up forgiving their fathers despite their lack of care. Although the authors portray it to us in different ways, by comparing both of these texts

Lucille Clifton’s “forgiving my father” and Molly Peacock’s “Say You Love Me” are two poems about incompetent and abusive fathers. The speaker of “forgiving my father” is angry about her father’s immorality and poverty that lead to her family’s debts. However, after addressing the complex relationships between the speaker’s parents as well as the father-son relationships of three generations, she finally realizes her father’s dilemma and decides to let it go. In contrast, “Say You Love Me” replays

Lucille Clifton’s and William Faulkner’s characters in “Forgiving my Father” and “A Rose for Emily” demonstrate sections of the authors personal lives and their past experiences, and the works give insight into the styles along with the flow that the authors use when they write pieces like these. The authors characters in the stories are also similarly written, being that some of the problems that they face in the stories. The way that Clifton and Faulkner write pieces like these can often leave

The Analysis of New Criticism in “Forgiving My Father” Poem by Lucille Clifton There are many literary works that have been created by the authors with different types and different genres of literary works. Literary works itself never separated from the elements that contained in it that help to build the story of literary work itself. There are 2 elements in a literary work; intrinsic element and extrinsic element. Intrinsic element itself is elements that make up a work of literature in the form

Hayden and “Forgiving My Father” by Lucille Clifton feature one of the most important roles in a family: a father. The two poems differ vastly in many regards, but many similarities surface among them and a common theme resides between them. Through the similarities they hold, the poems represent a common theme of regret for one’s lack of action. While the poems portray two different perspectives of a father, both poems feature a torn relationship between the narrator and the narrator’s father. In Hayden’s

option is to learn to forgive or forget any wrong doings and move on with life. Poets Lucille Clifton and Sylvia Plath both have poems that address this in very powerful and beautifully written ways. Both of their poems depict a speaker process of gaining freedom from their fathers after they have passed. Clifton’s poem “forgiving my father” is about a speaker that has been tormented by the death of her father, not because he died, but because of the way he lived his life. He was unable to provide

These lines indicate her main complaints she holds of her relationship with her father and she uses the line to set a tone and theme for the remainder of the poem. She continues in the very next line to further indicate the effects of this on her by saying, “All week you have stood in my dreams/like a ghost, asking for more time (Clifton 3-4)”. The purpose of this line is to convey to the reader the wide-ranging effects of her experiences

Being a father is a thankless job; it is a heavy responsibility for those who hold the title. There are some fathers who fail their children through abuse, neglect, and absence. Theodore Roethke’s “Papa’s Waltz” recounts a night the speaker’s father returns home late after drinking. What happens next can be interpreted as violence or merriment. Lucille Clifton’s “Forgiving my Father” is a visit to the grave where the child of two deceased parents “pays her dues”. The relationship between father and child

The poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is about a father and son’s relationship. In general, Roethke defines the relationship as being pleasant but includes some ambivalent emotions. On the other hand, the poem, “Forgiving my Father”, by Lucille Clifton, portrays a complicated relationship between a father and a daughter. Throughout the poem, Clifton wants to explain that she wants to forgive her father, but she is not able do so because the memories of her father are haunting her. In both