“Book Ends”
“Book Ends” alludes to a fresh death. Tony Harrison writes, “Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead/we chew it slowly that last apple pie.” The she’s demise is comparable to the dissolution of a book. The perusal of a book denotes the she’s all-inclusive lifecycle.
Besides, “Book Ends” hints at an unresponsive a father-son attachment. Tony Harrison writes, “You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say,/Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…” The speaker’s liaison with the addressee is not heart-warming owing to the mammoth muteness between them. Discourse between them is curbed for they “say nothing, sit, sleep, stare.” If the liaison were resilient, the couple would have dialogued ecstatically and recurrently. The allegorical ‘book ends’ accentuate the colossal discrepancy between the son and father who banked on the departed matriarch to unify them.
“Long Distance I”
Tony Harrison’s father’s existence is distraught due to his wife’s nonexistence and debility. The father I hollow because he can no longer ingest sweets and alcohol that he was obsessive about. The father says, “Ah've allus liked things sweet! But now ah push/food down mi throat! Ah'd sooner do wi'out./And t'only reason now for beer 's to flush/(so t'dietician said) mi kidneys out.” The father’s health condition (diabetes) would not appropriately incline him to guzzle the sweets that his son procured for him. His state designates that his healthiness is abating. The empty house signals the obstinate void in the father’s being.
