Getting caught by your child - Essay Example

“After making love we hear footsteps” Introduction: The author Galway Kinnell portrays the essence of parental and marital love by utilizing a complex pattern in his poem "after making love we hear footsteps". Love is a powerful feeling throughout our lives we experience love in different forms. Marital and parental love is two of the strongest forms of love one experiences during his life time. Galway Kinnell beautifully describes these two strongest forms of love in his poem.Analysis:In the first stanza, Galway uses the simile, "snores like a bullhorn" in an effort to inform the reader that the speaker is a large and powerful individual.

The poem does not begin with the speaker describing his love making but starts with what the speaker can do when he is not making love to his spouse, the speak could "play music" or "sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishmen". Apart from describing the physical characteristics of the individual, the simile "snores like a bullhorn" serves a dual function and describes that the speaker will sleep sounding like a bullhorn after making love to his spouse.In the lines 3 and 4, the author describes his son Fergus by stating "and Fergus will only sink deeper into his dreamless sleep".

The author cunningly uses the name Fergus for his son, who is a great warrior king of Ulster in a famous Irish legend. The author in “goes by all in one flash" describes his sons peaceful sleep. The author describes that the child himself never feels that he slept because he wakes up so fresh.In line six, the speaker describes the heavy breathing of his son as he drifts into a deeper sleep. The writer drastically changes the scenario in the next line by stating that the child wakes up in his safe bed with a stifled cry i.e. a forceful and suffocating cry.

In line 8, the speaker describes how frightened his child is from being wrenched out of his dreamless sleep by stating, "And he will wrench himself awake" and “make for it on the run-ad now we lie together".The author uses alliterations by stating "come cry" and "wrench" in an effort to resonate the intensity of the childs pain and fear. The speaker describes that his son running away from his to the bedroom, where they lay peacefully touching the length of their bodies after making quiet and tender love.

The writer takes the opportunity to describe the title of the poem "after making love we hear footsteps" in the lines from 11 to 15. The speaker concomitantly describes the fear of the child and the familiar feel of making love to his spouse in the lines, "make for it on the run" and "familiar touch of the long married". The speaker describes his love for his spouse but in line 12, the speaker shifts his attention to the frightened child standing at the door way. The speaker changes the sexual sitting and uses the next lines to describe another type of tender yet strong love i.e. parental love.

The speaker describes in line 16 that the child is aware that his parents love each other in bed and wants them to rescue them from his fear. The child comes into the bed and snuggles close to them while “his face gleaming with satisfaction" because he knows that his parents love him and will always be there to protect him. The poem ends by describing the amalgamation of marital and parental love, as the speaker express his feelings towards his spouse and the child they have created out of eternal love.