Childhood memories Essay Example For Students

Childhood memories Essay Finally, 5:00 out of work! I start towards my car and I think about finally getting home. I cant wait to get in the cool air conditioning and away from all my annoying co-workers. I open my car door, jump in, turn on my music full blast, and start driving away. I decided take a different way then usual because it was rush hour. My favorite song comes on the radio and I begin to sing. All of a sudden I stop, a car keeps whizzing in and out of all the cars in front of me. Out loud to myself, I say, What an idiot. Then the car streams across two lanes of oncoming traffic, hits the curb, and flips. Wow!!! I didnt even think to stop. Shaking, I just kept driving. Then my Childhood memories Essay just flashed through my mind. I was thinking about how I use to perceive things in my head a while ago. I thought about how pain and suffering use to scare me to death. I continued to drive, and I let go of the steering wheel with one hand for a second. I started to feel my neck. I felt two scares and I remembered when I was a baby with a chin the size of a football. My mom and doctors called it a tumor, but I didnt understand then. The third stanza paints a picture of a small childs careful admiration for his father as he recalls, The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle (479). And yet at the end of the stanza, we are shown just how defenseless the child is as his father drags him around the room, scraping his sons ear with his belt buckle. Roethke makes the most important statement in the last line of his poem, waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt (479). Clinging, and all that the word implies: fear, sadness, love and admiration, is both the greatest strength and obstacle the boy will encounter in his relationship with his father. In contrast to My Papas Waltz, D. H. Lawrences Piano is a mans remembrance of a happy childhood. Lawrence sets a dream-like tone in the first stanza of his poem as we are taken back through the years to a mans boyhood. Taken back by a song, the man is transported back to the Sundays of his childhood where he would sit beneath the piano as his mother played hymns. While melancholy, Lawrence shows us that his persona yearns for the happy childhood he once had with the line, The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past (574). The author establishes a connection with readers through his use of music as a means of passage through time with the statement, In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, (574). Through this use of music and the personas bittersweet memories of a past childhood, Lawrences Piano relates itself to the reader. My Papas Waltz and Piano are recollections of a grown mans youth. The vast differences in each mans upbringing points out the great differences in the human experience. My Papas Waltz is not only the tale of a childs required romp around the house, but can also be seen as a representation of the young boys entire relationship with his addicted father. Piano on the other hand, is the contemplation of a happy childhood past too quickly. Bibliography: Works Cited Roethke, Theodore. My Papas Waltz. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1999. 479 Lawrence, D.H. Piano. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X day, and Robert Funk, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1999 574 .