Narrative Of A Mother Daughter - 1061 Words

A tired mother reclines before a long mirror, beginning to prepare her ten-year-old daughter for bed. As she works out the last few tangles from her hair, the woman’s gaze turns to her reflection—the dulling of her once youthful body palpable in the company of her youthful daughter. Author Sharon Olds uses the narrative of a mother-daughter relationship to address issues of aging, death and replacement, juxtaposing the youth of a ten-year-old with the maturity of the thirty-five-year-old. â€Å"35/10† takes readers on one woman’s journey of sorrow as she copes with the loss of her youth, but deeper than that, her confrontation with grief as she realizes her daughter will one day replace her. The woman feels as though she is beginning her life’s decline just as her daughter begins her ascent into womanhood, inquiring, â€Å"†¦Why is it / just as we begin to go / they begin to arrive†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (lines 4-6). Olds takes on the voice of this des pondent woman in her poem â€Å"35/10,† using rich, honest language and metaphoric comparisons to communicate observations about the cycle of life and the pattern of replacement. In the main body of her poem, Olds lists a sequence of three key metaphoric comparisons between the woman and her daughter’s changing bodies. Both characters are experiencing small â€Å"previews† of their futures through developmental transformations, the younger a preview of womanhood and the older a preview of aging and ultimately future replacement. The comparison is made in the sameShow MoreRelatedEssay about Personal Narrative - Mother and Daughter Relationship637 Words   |  3 PagesPersonal Narrative- Mother and Daughter Relationship I am rummaging through a cardboard box full of pictures, looking for the perfect one to put in one of those sentimental Mother and Daughter word frames from Hallmark. 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In Philip Page’s article, â€Å"Circularity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved,† he writes, â€Å"The plot is developed through repetition and variation of one or more core-images in overlapping waves... And it is developed through... the spiraling reiteration of larger, mythical acts such as birth, death, rebirth, quest-journeys, and the formation and disintegration of families†Read MoreThe Girl By Jane Kincaid Analysis1115 Words   |  5 Pagesviewed are from a first-person narrative since the narrator is te lling her story. The story is told in a very lax, kind of stream-of-consciousness voice, and the mother--except for two, speaks every line in the piece. b. Who are the characters being viewed? The characters that are being viewed in text are the narrator who is the â€Å"Girl.† Girl consists of a short set of writing concerning dramatic monologue in which a considered mother gives advice to her daughter throughout the literature, who