The Violets Gwen Harwood Analysis free essay sample

The Violets by Gwen Harwood was written during the late 1960s and was published in the anthology Selected Poems in 1975. As we know, Harwood’s poems explore philosophical and universal ideas. Harwood herself says â€Å"My themes are old ones – of love, memory, experience etc†, all of which are explored in this poem through the use of poetic and language techniques. Literally, the persona of the poem is outside when some aspects of the nature around her, like violets and a blackbird, trigger a memory from her childhood. The poem then flashbacks to a childhood memory of the persona as a young girl, which is shown through the indentation of the stanzas, where the girl wakes up in the afternoon thinking it is morning and becomes upset when she wonders ‘Where’s morning gone? ’. This continues until she falls asleep in the memory, and we are brought back to the present. The last stanza sums up some of her most valued childhood memories which continue to ‘drift in the air’ and remain with her. Figurative language and sensory imagery is used in the first stanza to create a tone of grieving, loss and nostalgia, through imagery of a dull ‘cold dusk’ and ‘frail, melancholy flowers among ashes’. The simile ‘the melting west is striped like ice-cream’ creates a sense of transition, reflecting the beginning of the persona’s introspective retreat into her thoughts. The use of an anaphora, which is the repetition of a word at the beginning of lines or sentences, in the line ‘Ambiguous light. Ambiguous sky’ also displays this transience. The symbol of ice-cream also represents childhood and a feeling of nostalgia for that time in the persona’s life. Her attempt at ‘whistling a trill’ may be an attempt to imitate her father’s whistling which is mentioned during the reflection of her memory, suggesting that she is trying to recreate her past experience but can’t properly do so. The persona’s direct speech in the line â€Å"Where’s morning gone? † is a rhetorical question that is questioning the passage of time, and the plaintive tone used by the child also conveys that past experiences can’t be relived. The poem is of a free verse form, and this paired with frequent use of enjambment allows Harwood to create a train-of-thought style of the poem and create a slower, more reflective pace, promoting the continuity of life and showing the growth of the persona’s journey from childhood to maturity and from innocence to experience. Iambic pentameter has been used to reflect a conversational flow with natural intonations that makes the memory appear personal. An irregular rhyme scheme keeps the reader engaged, but paired with the liberal use of full stops and commas, especially in the middle of lines, represents the irregularity and ‘bumpiness’ of time. The unchangeable passage of time is shown through the cyclical structure of the poem, which is created through the violet motif, the transition from dusk to morning to afternoon to dusk again, and through the starting and ending of the poem with un-indented stanzas. The violet is a motif throughout the poem and acts as a symbol for the binding and fusion of past and present. It acts as the trigger that transitions the persona from reality into her thoughts, just like the gull in At the Water’s Edge or Mozart’s music in Alter Ego. The violets also act as a symbol for the persona’s past memories and experiences. The flowers are ‘frail’ and ‘melancholy’ at the start of the poem, and are among ‘ashes and loam’. The ashes represent death, and loam is a fertile type of soil, and is therefore symbolic of life and growth. This use of dichotomy and juxtaposition suggests that her memories still have a place and will always be ‘alive’, but they will never be recreated in the same way and are therefore, in a sense, ‘dead’. According to English critic Alison Hoddinot, ‘the seamless binding of the past and present portrays the idea that valued memories remain with us always and transcend time and the ambiguous experiences of our existence within the world, even if they can’t be physically recreated. The violets give the young girl and her parents a sense of permanence as they appear in the present and past. The memories in the poem maintain a cohesiveness and continuity of experience through repeated motifs such as the violets and the ‘whistling’. Memories also give us a recovered sense of life, as shown through the final line of the poem ‘faint scent of violets drifts in air’. This example of sensory imagery also creates a rhythmic drifting sense linked closely to the â€Å"stone-curlews call from Kedron Brook†. It echoes images of the speaker’s mind drifting into reflection and aurally creates transience between the present and the past. Childhood is portrayed as a time of safety that is often looked back upon with nostalgia from an adult perspective. Monosyllabic words are used to show the simplicity of childhood life, for example in the line â€Å"the thing I could not grasp or name†. The ‘spring violets’ are ‘in their loamy bed’ and are no longer frail and melancholy, and the memory takes place on a ‘hot afternoon’ in contrast to the ‘cold dusk’ that represents the present. Childhood is represented as a joyful, vivacious time in one’s life, and the value of a stable family life is conveyed. The unexpected integration of Australian vernacular in the line ‘it will soon be night, you goose’, adds a sense of freedom and relaxation to the otherwise formal discourse and more rigid structure of the poem, once again reflects the simplicity and innocence that is associated with childhood. The use of enjambment, alliteration and long vowel sounds, such as in the lines ‘Towards nightfall waking from the fearful/ half-sleep of a hot afternoon’, creates a dream-like mood, further promoting this nostalgia for simplicity and comfort that is associated with childhood. The memories are also associated with light imagery, reflecting their importance in the persona’s life and also suggesting that they give her hope for the future. Light is another symbol used to represent valued memories. Memories are ‘hours of unreturning light’, and ‘years cannot move nor death’s disorienting scale distort those lamplit presences’. This almost shows that memories can bring light to our present realities no matter how harsh those realities are, and that valued memories are so strong and unambiguous they can fill and bring a melancholy world to life. Harwood suggests that the past is in our present and will consequently shape the way we see our future. The poem also creatively expresses that although childhood and life may pass quickly, it can still be reflected upon and relived through our memories. This transition from uncertainty to understanding emphasises the progression of life and illustrates the stages of a person’s life. Linked to the power of memory, the sense that love is a central and enduring force is also an underlying idea that Harwood has incorporated. This is primarily shown in the memory of the persona as the warm imagery and brightness of the setting gives a sense of happiness and bliss. Spring is used to represent these positive attributes. The â€Å"hot afternoon†, â€Å"spring violets† and ‘sweetness’ give a sense of freshness, vitality and comfort through their sensory imagery. It reflects the childlike serenity and innocence of the memory despite the obvious distress the persona feels when losing â€Å"those hours of unreturning light†. These images represent the love that was present between the persona and her parents as well as between her and the home. She describes her mother’s â€Å"long hair falling down to her waist†, again using long vowel sounds to make her mother seem almost angelic. Her mother’s maternal nature is shown in the line where she â€Å"dried [her] tearful face as [she] sobbed†. The memories at the end also show this love as she remembers â€Å"her father, bending down to inhale the gathered flowers, with tenderness stroking [her] mother’s goldbrown hair†. These flashes represent the beautiful connection she had with her parents as a child. The light of the memory is juxtaposed, however, to the present where the weather is cold. Although the violets are shown to be â€Å"frail† and â€Å"melancholy† the juxtaposing image does not necessarily show a death of the love that was there when she was a child, rather that the love that she had for this place is still there whenever she looks upon the landscape. It shows that despite the change that time has brought to the environment, the life and love that was once there will always be there. The first stanza is comprised of a selection of particular images such as the â€Å"whistling trill†, the flowers and the â€Å"ambiguous light†. These motifs are references to the simpler parts of the reflection that the persona has, leading to a realisation of everlasting memory, through which love has endured. Encompassing the power of memory, the durability of love, and the transition from childhood to adulthood, is the motif of time. Harwood’s consideration of the force of time is one that both changes elements of one’s life and tests the strength of others. Maturity, for example, changes with time as life experience is gained. Love and memory, however, is proved powerful enough to remain sound despite the movement of time. This is shown through the line â€Å"years cannot move nor death’s disorienting scale distort those lamplit presences†. The cyclical nature of the poem reflects the ambiguity of time but also the relevance of the past as it reinvents itself in the present. Gwen Harwood’s â€Å"The Violets† is a meditation that reflects a childhood experience that was perhaps a pivotal point in the growth and psychological development of the persona. Her first experience with the realisation that time can be lost is remembered with an adult perspective and the maturity of the present persona realises that although time can be lost, memory is what keeps the past alive. It defies time and therefore presents a subconscious immortality that comes with a person’s memories.