Cider With Rosie By Laurie Lee Analysis

Critical Commentary on a passage from Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

This passage starts with the words ‘as time goes on' which suggests to the reader that something happened prior to this, but doesn't explain what. Its goes on to explain that as the children grew up and left home, their mothers little habits got worse and worse. The writer gives good descriptions producing a visual imagery of these habits: ‘plant pots and newspapers left throughout the house, reading more and sleeping upright in a chair.' This to me portrays an image of a lonely person; she could sleep for an hour, rise and scrub the floor or go looking for wood in the middle of the night. Sleeping and scrubbing floors are a relatively normal thing for anyone to be
It begins with the words, ‘Then suddenly,' this immediately tells us that something significant happened. His father died, and with his death, his mother gave up on life. There is a touch of irony in the passage, because she waited all that time for him to return and it was just a fantasy. The children knew he would never return but in all that time she clung on to that hope. Their father's death ended any reason and happiness that his mother had. The writer conveys an underlying note of blame in this paragraph. He says ‘the coldness of that which killed her.' He explains how his mother was faithful to his father, waited thirty-five years for praise, raised his family and all she expected in return was for him to return to her. In dying he also killed off any dreams for the future that she had. The writer informs us that his mother became ‘simple minded and returned to her youth.' The thin shreds of sanity that she had had finally been severed when his father died. They buried her under the end of the beech-wood, not far from her four year old daughter, this sentence tells us that when she died they buried her near to nature where she was most happy. There is a great deal of sadness in the last