Father and Child

Harwood’s poem is divided into two sections, and explores themes of power, authority and guilt through a depiction of the relationship between the eponymous “Father and Child.” 

In the first part of the diptych, the child takes the father’s gun at night and shoots an owl, but the shot does not kill the animal. The child is excited at the beginning of the poem – “I knew my prize.” But he recognises the power the gun wields, as it makes him “master of life and death.” He shoots the owl, which “swayed, / ruined” and is horrified. The child mourns “for what I had begun.” Here, we see Harwood address the topic of death as a process, rather than a single moment in time. Hearing the shot, the father arrives in the barn and makes the child kill the animal before he is allowed to leave. The father is described almost in abstract, as a forceful source of authority – “an old No-Sayer.” The child does what his father commands, but is traumatised. It is this moment that informs the basis of the child’s understanding of mortality. It is important to acknowledge that while the child is overcome with guilt for what he has done, he is still presented as harbouring his childhood innocence, especially when contrasted with the brutish authority of his father. The child is not a violent murderer, but rather a young person who has accidentally corrupted themselves. 

The second part of the poem, “Nightfall,” charts the father’s gentle descent into death. The title of this part is symbolic of the process of death, to which there can be no resisting, though the speaker does fantasise “Let us walk this hour / as if death had no power.” The poem ends with a reflection on the reality that nothing can be done to prepare one for death, whether it be their own or someone else’s.