Memorial Disillusionment in “Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year” & “My Mama Moved Among the Days” Anonymous College

As children, one often admires some parental figure throughout life, whether related or not. The desire for guidance and affinity from these esteemed figures are inherently necessary in a child’s rearing; they depend on a solid foundation to flourish as an adult. However, not every child receives the love they so desperately desire. Some parents may emotionally abandon a child out of their own insecurity, and cause a whirlwind of conflict in the child as an adult. When the adult reflects on these memories, they are met with an unsavory reality.

Raymond Carver’s “Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year” and Lucille Clifton’s “My Mama Moved Among the Days” offer similar ideas of parent-child relationships as a result of abandonment. Both reflect on an absent parental figure in a child’s life and the corollary of this absence in adulthood. While they differ in the amount of neglect implied, the poems ultimately share the same result. Through tone and figurative language, these poems illustrate a common theme of disillusionment from their kinship and themselves in face of a poor upbringing.

The reflections of each verse allow the reader to understand the detachment the children, now adults, feel toward their absent...