Father and Son Flashcards
imagery
“black and squat, dull like a garden slug”
- Just as a garden slug is black and destructive, so too is the gun going to destroy a beautiful relationship/family setting/life.
- Garden refers to how the father loved to garden before the passing of his wife
imagery
“I had to go and collect you. Like a dog.”
- Compares his son to a dog
- Suggest that the dad is feeling tense and stressed, but is also worried about the condition is son is in
- Suggests that the son feels detached - he isn’t showing any remorse or is trying to fix their relationship - and humiliated as he is compared to a dog
imagery
“A baby pressed to my shaved cheek. Now his skin is sandpaper. He is a man.”
- Metaphor
- He has grown up, become rough and now has a hard exterior
- One-worded answers to his father, swears at him, no longer shows him any respect
- Their relationship has changed - from close to now never speaking to him father (keeping secrets)
imagery
“I taught him how to tie a blood-knot”
- When he was a child, his father taught him how to tie a blood-knot
- Symbolises their close relationship
- An unbreakable bond
imagery
“Fishing”
- Sum up the relationship between them: the father is able to “strike” and “to play” the son so that he will not “escape”.
- With a mere reference to his earlier …
imagery
“Used to dig the garden, grow vegetables and flowers for half the street” “Now he just sits and waits. He sits and waits for me and the weeds have taken over.”
- All the father does now is sit and wait for his son to return
- The fathers life has grown over control - letting the bad things take over all the good things in his life
imagery
“Let me put my arms around you.”
By the end of the story, the father cradles his dead son in his arms, just as Mary cradles the dead body of Jesus in traditional art. He can finally say how he feels about his son, having fully taken on the motherly role which the son needed so badly in his life.
“snap of a switch”
“his bare feet click”
“crackling like fire”
onomatopoeia - associations with violence, guns, bombs etc
w/c - snap - word choice of snap has connotations of something done with ignorance and quick.
- suggests a break in their relationship
- Tone of the ‘s’ sound used to give more of a harsh snappy tone.
- the violence/tension between the father and son is heightened by these references to Belfast
“This is my son who let me down. I love him so much it hurts but he won’t talk to me.”
w/c - it hurts - suggests that the more the father loves and longs for his son the worse it gets as all the father wants to he is close however the son wants as much distance as possible.
contrast - let me down & love
- father’s thoughts reveal his love for his son and the problems they have with each other.
- the father wishes to share a connection with his son like he used to but now he can no longer find a way to talk with his son.
“When he sees me he turns away”
literal/metaphorical - doing anything to avoid communication
“Where are you going today?”
“What’s it to you?”
- the speech of both is clipped, tense and ultimately pointless
“The sound of ambulances criss-crosses the dark.”
Tone - given off by the ‘c’ sound - suggests the spread and regularity of the ambulances at night, fear that the son might be in one
- suggests that northern Ireland is a dangerous place for someone to live, especially during the Troubles. There isn’t any time in which his home is safe, as there is always danger somewhere waiting for him to step out of his house.
“I sleep with the daylight”
- both live in fear for son’s life
“front door shudders as he leaves”
personification/transferred epithet - emotions of the characters are transferred to the house, showing how the characters feel like they cannot trust each other enough to share how they feel so they have to assume through their actions on how they feel.
imagery - Just as the door trembles in fear so too does the father every time the son leaves the house as he is riddled with the fear of the possibilities of what the son is doing.
“My son is breaking my heart”
- emphasises his pain and suffering
“Is it my fault there is no woman in the house? Is it my fault a good woman should die?”
- we have to piece together fragments revealed by each character
“A baby pressed to my shaved cheek. Now his chin is sandpaper. He is a man”
metaphor - he has grown up, become rough, and now has a hard exterior
- highlights his roughness/hardness of the son - no love/emotion
“When he was a boy, I took him fishing. I taught him how to tie a blood-knot.”
- The word choice of “blood-knot” symbolises how close their relationship was before the son grew up and began to ignore his father.
- The ends of a blood-knot intertwine showing that they can never escape from one another and will always be connected by the blood they share.
- This suggests that it is more than a way to fish but more something that represents how close they once were, they are family and are tied together till the end. It is something that if pulled gets tighter.
