Potato Eaters Analysis

Working is one of the most defining aspects of a person’s character. It is ubiquitous in our way of life and paramount to maintaining it. As a defining point in our character it is influenced by upbringing and heritage. A parent's career choice, or general means of livelihood, has an immense influence on a child’s path in life, whether because of the didactic nature of the parent or the child’s veneration for their parents. Alternatively, youth may become resigned from an early age to adopt the social and economic level they have always lived, no matter how loathsome or prosaic. The most positive influence a parent can have on their child comes from their own honest, persistent, fervent work instilling the same ethic or the same love of the profession, regardless of profession itself, into their child. The poem “Digging” captures the essence of the less literal form of this interpretation, where a parent and grandparent’s legacy together impacted their descendant to success as a poet while writing of the ethic to their parent and grandparent. Despite following a career path entirely differently, his
The blame cannot turn on to the parents, but more taken as an addition to the child's environment. When a parent’s station in life is less than ideal that standard may imprint on a child’s mind as what is normal. The child may start to believe that is all they are capable of and all attempts to the contrary are meaningless. A mindset established from a depressive mindset. The multiple generations displayed in Potato Eaters amplified this depressing, cathartic thought into the inescapable vile it takes its victims as. In a type of antithesis to the parents who works hard at something they love, the attitude helps make a difference between the children emerging from these different