Odes To Childhood

Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill,” Fleur Adcock’s “The Video,” Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” and Margaret Atwood’s “Bored” are all poems relating to the narrator’s appreciation and/or reminiscing about their youth and the past. All of these poems are memories of past events that have occured in the narrators own life. Also, most of these poems seem to be an ode to the way things were.
“The Video” is a short poem telling of a child appreciating the time she had before her mother gave birth to a new baby girl. The narrator tells of the child watching the video of the birth of her new baby sister, and rewinding it so the baby goes back into the womb; the child is wishfully thinking. This disapproval of the new baby is made clear when the narrator negatively points out that the daughter realizes that her mother spends only half as much time with her as she used to. The older child wishes things went back to the way they were before she had a new sister.
“My Papa’s Waltz” is a poem telling a story about the narrator’s father and how he was a drunken and abusive parent and husband. This quickly flowing poem is the narrator’s reminiscing about how she had to overcome and deal with her fathers flaws; she clung on like death regardless of his messy habits.
The underlying theme in the poem “Bored” by Margaret Atwood is how at first, as a kid, she underappreciated the boredom and repetition of being young, only to come to the realization that the repetitions and boredom of childhood are blissful compared to the future. As a child, one experiences significantly unimportant things and always seems to wish for more, not knowing the realities of the future. This poem, being about the death of the author’s father, tells of how she wishes once again to be ignorant like she was when she was a child. As a child she wanted nothing more than to escape the hell of repetition and boredom, but now that she knows too much, she would like nothing more than to return to her old state.
Similarly, the poem “Fern Hill” is about the narrators longing for the way things used to be and how he loved his youth. Most of the poem speaks of his adoration of youth and its carefree nature. Many times during the poem the author attaches the color of green and gold to youth; both green and gold usually represents happiness in literature.
All of these poems tell of a narrator’s remembrance of their younger days. Similarly, in all of these poems there is a sense that most of the narrator’s believe that those were the best days of their lives, perhaps with the exception of “My Papa’s Waltz” in which the narrator has a more regretting tone than the other narrators.