A Sad Relationship between a Father and Son
By
Eric Sissom
English Composition II
03 September 2006
The poem “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World” by Jimmy Carter is a sad, but touching story. The speaker is reliving his childhood memories and his relationship with his father. “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World” is about a boy who resents his father for the way he treats him and why he’s taken away from his father’s house.
“This is the pain I mostly hide” (1) and “He used to shape what I should be” (8) suggests the father abuses the boy. The father hates himself for how he treats his son by “not owning up that he might feel / his own pain when he punished me” (lines 9-10). The courts took away his son. He files an appeal in court to get his son back. The boy did not care as “I didn’t show my need to him / since his response to an appeal / would not have mean as much to me” (lines 11-13). Another man, who feels sorry for the boy, adopts him as “the hunger for his outstretched hand / a man’s embrace to take me in” (lines 4-5).
The boy continues to resent his father and promises himself not to become the father he had to his own children. “[The] father who will never cease to be / alive in me” (lines 23-24). He is standing beside his father’s bedside with his own sons and witnesses the last moments of his father’s life. “I never put aside / the past resentments… / until, with my own sons, I shared / his final hours…” (lines 18-21).
“I Wanted to Share My Father’s World” can be similar to other son relationships with their father or daughter relationships with their mother. There are a lot of reasons why children may resent their parents. Families struggle with divorces, money, and other life issues.
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Grade: 45/50 | This essay was written by Eric Sissom, autism@ericsissom.com