My Father Would Not Show Us

My Father Would Not Show Us

Ideas/ Themes - The speaker reveals the effects of losing her father. Since she refers to her and her siblings as “us” in the context of having lived with their father at the time of his death, it is clear that she was young when he died, and that his death came as a great shock to her. The effects of this loss are described throughout the poem as the speaker describes the present state of her dead father as he lies in a coffin, to the man with the “wry smile” whom she had always known.

Language - the alliteration in "fathers face" and "days deead", plus the internal rhyme of "me to see" in stanza one elevates the simle vocabulary to a more profound level, alloweing the narrator to express their greif in an eloquent way.

                  - the narratr comments that it is "cold" in the mortyary and this serves as a metaphor, the entire world is cold now that the warmth od her father has gone.

                  - the fact that the pine coffin "has not yet been del;ivered" underlines the fact that the fathers death has copme to a suprise 5to thye family and they were not prepared.

                  - the image of the fathers face runs throughout the poem.

                  - initially the narrator says that their fathers face has been "organised". this suggests that an undertaker has made constmerary perparations on the body prior to the narrators visit. undertakers will set the face into a peacfull expression, whilst still retainming facial qualitys particualr to the person when they were sill alive.

                  - however as the narrator expects, their fathers face looks "invertes" it looks sop unlike him that it appears upsidedown, and…