Comparing Donald Hall's 'My Son, My Executioner'

Cotton E. R.

Evelyn R. Cotton
Dr. Pittman
English 102
March 16, 2017 Compare and Contrast Poem “My Son, My Executioner” and “Home is So Sad” As parents, we go through a rollercoaster of emotions, from the time our child is born into this world; the amount of fear, sense of duty, and blessing we put on ourselves, can be overwhelming. Our freedom, single self is now overshowed by the responsibility of guiding and protecting this human being. Even so, children eventually leave, we find
The narrator holding his new born son; full of apprehension, questions his life, as he knew it was gone. “My son, my executioner” (Hall, line1), my new child has stopped my freedom- fictitiously killed me by being born. Metaphorically the father exaggerates the point, being a parent is difficult and takes your life. In the next lines, he observes his child “Quiet and small and just astir- And whom my body warms” (Hall, line 3-4), symbolic imagery lets us know, the speaker needs to protect his child. In the second stanza Hall’s poem shows irony “Sweet death, small son, our instrument – Of immortality” (Hall, line5-6) the element “sweet death” for death to most people is far from being sweet. The father’s merely saying “I’m fine with giving up my life for my son because now he is my life – my child will live on after my death.” The father in the third stanza, “We twenty-five and twenty-two, Who seemed to live forever” (Hall, line 8-9) mulls over that he’s too young to parent. Hall’s mixture of imagery “Observe enduring life in you-And start to die together” (Hall, line11-12) allows us to understand the young father contentedly excepts raising his child. Donald Hall’s poem “My Son, My Executioner” shows the massive turning point in a person’s life; it can be looked at as a continuous legacy or the withering of one’s
The poem “Home is So Sad” by Philip Larkins, reveals the undoubted discontent some parents feel when their child has grown-up and left home. Comparably both authors poems are personal and symbolic to loss, catching the attention in the first lines, playing with the reader’s emotions. “Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,” (Larkin, line 1) the speaker is making a painstaking point, metaphorically a home protects us, our haven but this home is empty. When comparing, the loss is real to the fathers but “My Son, My Executioner” personal freedom is lost to a new child, whereas Larkin’s poem the loss is the child grows up, leaving home. Both men are facing changes in their lives. The symbolic contrast that Donald Hall writes, when the father expresses “Your cries and hunger document” (Hall, line 7) is just the beginning cycle to parenthood and he’s full of apprehension. However, in stanza two “Home is So Sad” the father is reflecting “And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be,” (Larkin, line 6-7) that this home’s inability to satisfy is gone. This is where the saying “empty nest” comes from, we look around confused like a bird, wondering if our child has fallen from the nest or taken