The Writer

4 Pages 1033 Words

“I wish her a lucky passage”(1117). This sentence is the key sentence in, “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur. Richard Wilbur uses key words that form clear images for the reader. Through these images and symbols, Wilbur clearly illustrates a loving parent’s battle to sit back and see their daughter through tough times.
There will come a time in a person’s life when he/she will have to be able to live on his/her own and be able to support themselves in order to survive. My parents decide that the best decision was for me to move out of the house for a summer when I turned nineteen. At first I was confused because I thought that I had done something for them to ‘throw me out of the house.’ After time though, I realized that this was the best decision in my life. I figured out that they do love and that this decision was the best decision that would help me become responsible and grow up. Now at the age of twenty-one I live on my own and I know what it takes to survive. When my parents first had me they loved me so much. Growing up they did everything for me. Whatever I needed they would get it. In a way they spoiled me so much that they realized that I depended on them far too much. All of a sudden at the age of nineteen they decided to in a sense ‘cut me off.’ They decided that I needed to start to become my own independent person. Not only was it going to be tough for me, but it was also going to be just as tough for my parents. They knew that at times it would be a great struggle to try and make ends meet, but they also knew that this would in a sense turn me into a man. In the poem, was the same thing going on? Did the speaker of the poem really love her daughter?
Richard Wilbur’s use of tone and symbols will allow me to guarantee that the speaker had love for the daughter in the poem. The first stanza of the poem really tells it all:

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light break...