Essay About Initial Picture Of A Man And Only Child

Techniques of Feliks Skrzynecki Poem
Techniques of Feliks Skrzynecki Poem
Feliks Skrzynecki
Stanza 1:
Attribute to Felik’s dignity and stoicism in the face of loss and hardship.
Personal/Possessive pronoun “my”-final relationship
“Gentle”-tender adjective
(warm feelings, loving affection)
‘Kept pace only with the Joneses of his own mind’s making’
Colloquialism
Alliteration of ‘M’-‘Mind’s making’
(Has his own values, individual-sets his own standards)
Initial picture of a man detached from the world that surrounds him-shows immigrant isolation but also Feliks strength of character.
‘Loved his garden like an only child’-Simile
Ambiguous-loved it like it was an only child then it mean he showed the garden a lot of attention, loved it.
If he loved it like he was an only child then it demonstrates Felik’s loneliness and isolation.
It could demonstrate the composer’s bitterness that Felik’s loved the garden more than his son.
‘Walking its perimeter’-shows that he’s on the edge; not a part of it isolated.
‘Alert, brisk and silent’-adjective listing; reinforces the time. Feliks spent sweeping as well as the sense that this is a childhood vision. It could also suggest that Feliks is reliving his journey across the world.

Stanza2:
Manual Images-‘Hand darkened from cement, finger with cracks’- father is hardworking, stoic, a good provider. Powerful images of hard physical labour.
‘Like the sods he broke’-simile
Broke, existed, fall, turned, rolled-inversion of sentence order emphasizes Feliks actions.
Real admiration and owe in son’s attitude to his father.
‘Why his arm didn’t fall off’-child like-superhuman strength to the child.
Stanza3:
‘His Polish Friends’-identify the nationality
‘Too violently I thought’-implied judgment-son feels excluded in this stanza. Dissociation from the distant, ‘Alien’ culture.
‘Feliks Skrzynecki’-direct speech-odds dramatic immediacy.
‘Reminisced’-positive connotations-immigrant experience, fond memories.
‘About farms where paddocks flowers, with corn and wheat, Horses they bred, pigs’-peasant agricultural background.
Words suggest action+hardwork/robust and physical life they used to live.
Duality of Feliks character
-The man who helped the “paddocks flower”
-The man “skilled in slaughtering”
Garden in Australia a way of reproducing old pastoral life.
‘I never once heard’-hagiographical(reverently celebratory)
‘I never’-emphatic-reiterates the son’s admiration of his father’s stoicism.
‘Dug’-reflects