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My Mother at Sixty Six PDF234
My Mother at Sixty Six PDF234
- Kamala Das
About the Poet: She is a sensitive writer who captures the complexities of human relationships in her
poems.
➢ Fear of loss or separation from the old ageing mother. It talks about
the anguish of the daughter over her mother’s advancing age and
the fear of permanent separation from her
WORD MEANINGS:
IMPORTANT WORDS:
This means that these trees racing past and the speeding car are a reminder that the
time has flown by as fast as her mother was so youthful but now she has grown old.
2. Merry children spilling: Merry children spilling means the happy or joyous
children playing or spilling outside their house. They symbolizes youth, energy, life.
These children full of energy and life are a sharp contrast to her mother who is weak,
dull and lifeless at sixty six. This gives poetess the realization that her mother is now
coming off age and she may lose her in near future.
These two images (of trees and children) present a stark contrast to her old ageing
mother. Her mother’s pale ashen like face symbolizes inactiveness, death, ageing and
decay on the other hand the trees and young children symbolize the activeness, zeal
and the beginning of life.
WORD MEANINGS:
i. Wan: colorless
ii. Winter’s moon: winter’s moon is basically hazy or unclear because its
hidden behind
• In the next few lines she talks about the familiar ache or the painful realization that
she has not cared for her ageing mother enough.
• This ache symbolizes her helplessness and the underlying fear of separation from her.
It is familiar because she has experienced it in the past as well maybe as a child when
she came to know she has to go and work away from her.
• She compares her mother’s pale and withered face with the winter’s moon. She
specifically writes winter here because the winter’s moon looses it radiance and
brightness behind the fog and mist just like her mother’s face seemed to lose
itsradiance misted by her age. Winter also symbolizes death or inactivity when
nothing grows and the waning moon symbolizes fading or decay.
Why has the mother been compared to the ‘late winter’s moon’?
What is the familiar ache of the poetess and why does it keep on returning to
her?
• The last four lines of the poem are the parting words that she says to her mother.
• These words are expressive of her dilemma and confusion in her mind and the
repetition of the word “Smile” three times signifies ÷
2) The anxiety of her mother’s frailing health , which she tries to cover up with a smile
What does the parting words of the poet and her smile signify?
I. SIMILE
• Her face ashen like that of corpse.
II. REPITITION
• Thought away….. Thought away.
• Trees sprinting