Essay Collection

Critical Response Paper

Grace Crilly
Professor Kurup
Critical Response Paper 2
04 April 2022

The way an author can write from projects such as a poem and/or a story, can still underlie each other where a poem can be perceived as a story with the aspects of character, plot, conflict and resolution. Vice versa, where a story can be perceived with aspects such as voice, diction, imagery, symbolism and structure. In this essay, I'll be discussing my thought process on reading these poems, My Son Wants To Know Who His Biological Father Is by Blas Falconer and The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

Reading My Son Wants To Know Who His Biological Father Is, I depicted a father and son relationship is essential in this poem. The father and son relationship gave me the impression of the role of the father is where the title, My Son Wants to Know Who His Biological Father Is comes into play. I interpreted that the relationship he had with his adoptive father wasn't a close relationship, where the possibility he yearns to learn about his biological father. What told me that he has an adoptive father is where he describes traits he doesn't share with his father, "My father had blue eyes, blonde hair, though mine are brown." I thought of how the poem is written, that it has a narrator of the main character within the two roles of his adoptive father and himself as a father. This role "factor" in my impression transitions into where his character is comparing his relationship with his adoptive father based on the language he speaks and sexuality, where we see themes in this poem of LGBTQ and audio, "My father could not speak Spanish and wondered, How can you love another man? We rarely touched. When my son is counting, I count with him. I say, I am your father too. 1..2..." This told me as a reader this highlights the role of the son who is now a father, thinks highly of his son to be close with him, unlike how he felt a son to his father in his youth, supporting him. His role as a father now, I depicted in this line, "I say, I am your father, too. 1...2...." represents the audio theme, where he supports his son in co-comparison how he felt of his relationship with his father in his youth on how he speaks to his son. This poem I perceived to have aspects of character within the adoptive father and son, and the father and his son. The conflict and plot being his adoptive father feeling as an absentee parent in his life, yearning to know his biological father. In resolution, where he is a father to a son in his mindset thinking of how a son should think highly of his father, in doing so he supports his son.

My Son Wants To Know Who His Biological Father Is, I found in my own interest, looking into poems on poet.org. On the poetry foundation through our list, another poem that caught my eye was The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. With this poem, I was a bit familiar with it that was mentioned in a show I used to watch as a kid. As a reader now, I had a hard time depicting the message of the poem while reading it for the first time. I first questioned exactly why Frost wrote the line, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/Two roads diverged in a wood," to occur more than once in the poem, especially not knowing what kind of poem this is. I did look up this poem online that gave me more information about the poem, that this poem is an example of free verse, however, it does not have a strictly specific poetic form, such as a sonnet. An idea I created in my head on how the physical directions can create an abstract idea from the line "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," based on a person's mindset of choice. From this ideal concept, shows how the poem essentially interprets the concept of choice, having to do with what options a person is presented with and with these options is how the person has to make a decision. This is presented in the lines, "Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear;" and "And both that morning equally lay. In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day!" As well as within making your choice, the process you go through in order to make a choice is flawed within itself. That making choices in life isn't easy and this poem represents that using the words he chose to write this poem such as the lines, "Two roads diverged in a wood" occurs more than once. That creates the underlying message.

No matter what kind of person you are, a child, a pre-teen, teenager, young adult, adult comes to choices and because of this, it made me think of the role of the adoptive son and father in My Son Wants To Know Who His Biological Father Is within the relationship of him as a father to his son, where he makes the choice of supporting his son. Whereas, the relationship that he has with his adoptive father, his adoptive father made the choice of not making enough effort to talk to his son in a language his son would know, "My father could not speak Spanish." Further into another choice of not understanding his son's sexuality, speaking through these words, "How could you love another man?" Where he doesn't realize how that can affect their relationship by not putting in effort on how he should speak to his son. I found how the subject of choice occurs in the poem The Road Not Taken that relates to My Son Wants To Know Who His Biological Father Is, based on the characters, conflict and resolution. The resolution that I found between the father and son is the son as a new dad prioritizes his son as his choice of how he wants his son to grow up.

In conclusion, I discussed my thought process reading My Son Wants To Know Who His Biological Father Is by Blas Falconer and The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost based on aspects on how storytelling is perceived in poetry. Conclusively, I wrote my thought processes individually for each poem into how they relate to each other within the theme of choice.