In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet Essay Example
In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet Essay Example

In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet Essay Example

Available Only on StudyHippo
  • Pages: 3 (607 words)
  • Published: August 25, 2016
  • Type: Essay
View Entire Sample
Text preview

Anne, as the speaker of the poem, begins describing her feelings at that sad moment. She feels sorry for her grandchild because she thinks that God took her so soon. The repetition of the word “farewell” at the beginning of the first three verses emphasizes the tragic situation that she is living. However, the way how she comes to terms with death in this first part of the poem is really unusual for a Puritan person. She thinks that her grandchild should not have death as soon as she did, in some way she is saying that God did not let her grandchild leave and she complains about it in this first part of the poem.

This attitude about death is quite different from the usual Puritan view of death, t

...

hat accept it as a part of the life that God has prepared to them, so the poet resists to accept the common view of death (common for the Puritans). The comparison with the flower in the third lane evidences this though. As the poem advances, Anne says that she should not complain more about her lost, because she is gone and nothing can bring her back. On the other hand, if we go deep in the second part of the poem we can see a change on the poet's mind.

Her religious thoughts “develop”, in some way, coming back to her traditional ones. However, in this second stanza she plays with the metaphor of time, she makes a relation between the pass of time and the death, the end. In some way she tries to say that everything that start

View entire sample
Join StudyHippo to see entire essay

have to end sooner or later. The first part of the second stanza refers continuously to the pass of time related with the nature, as we can see in the first verses where she does a metaphor with trees, plums, apples, corn and grass.

With this, she want to describe the cycle in the nature, where the death come when there is not more time to life, when the lifetime expire. With that imagery of nature I think that the speaker show some kind of acceptance, its true that she talks about time about anyway she accepts that we cannot escape from death, it can be for the God’s grace or for the pass of time but it will always come.

As I said at the beginning of this paragraph, I think that with this change of theme, focusing on the pass of time in the nature in some way she refers to God, I mean, that she hasn? t totally left from her Puritan view. For that reason, it seems that one stanza is against the other one, like if in the first one she wrote what she really though at this sad moment, and in the second one she wrote an explanation for this. The figure of God in the poem is really different as it was used to be for Puritan writers. Anne describes God as unfair “person” responsible of the child’s death.

Bradstreet does not include her grandchild in the cycle of nature that I have mentioned before, because she sees her death like a God’s injustice. The end of the poem describes her belief in God, she sees

him like a supreme person that guides nature and destiny even when she thinks that he took Elizabeth unfairly. The author’s diction forces the reader to question her spiritual sincerity during the entire poem, sometimes it seems to return to her roots but she is not clear as she is in the beginning where she shows her disagreement.

Get an explanation on any task
Get unstuck with the help of our AI assistant in seconds
New