2.5 Father Returning Home

About the poem / poet and the title - Father Returning Home' by Dilip Chitre is a biographical sketch of the poet's father. It is a monologue that deals with the plight of man, where he alienated from the very society that he built. He, thus, goes through the mundane motions of life, having no connections with either the outside world or even his family and suppresses his emotions as there is no one with whom he can share them.

The theme -The poem deals with the themes of alienation or estrangement, isolation, and the dissolution of the self in the man-made world.

Poetic Style /Language /Poetic devices -This two-stanza poem, which has been written in the form of a dramatic monologue, does not follow any rhyme scheme as it is written in free-verse. The lines in the poem clearly depict the miserable state of man in this busy and crowded world. The poet uses numerous figures of speech such as Alliteration, Consonance, Metaphor, Onomatopoeia, Paradox, Personification, Repetition, Simile and Transferred Epithet.

An example of Paradox from the poem is "unseeing eyes", as the phrase is self-contradictory. The language used by the poet is very simple and straight-forward. It paints a vivid picture of the tiring routine of the poet's father and communicates his pathetic condition through the use of various descriptive words. The use of enjambment, where one line of the poem continues into the next, indicates the succession of the worsening state of the father's condition, whether it's his isolation from the outside world in the first stanza or his alienation in his own house in the second stanza. The use of imagery is clearly evident in the poem. Whether the poet is sketching the image of his father as an old man with words like "eyes dimmed by age", "fade homeward", "grey platform", or describing his father's appearance "soggy shirt and pants", "black raincoat stained with mud". "chappals sticky with mud", or comparing the disembarking of his father from the crowded train as "a word dropped from a long sentence", the strong use of imagery makes the poem thoroughly appealing.

Message, values, morals in the poem -The message that the poem conveys is that of the seclusion of man from the modern world. In today's fast-paced and humdrum life, the only solace that man can find is in his dreams of the past or the future. The poem also communicates the apathy of the society towards the elderly, who are trying to cope with estrangement in a metropolis.

Your opinions about the poem - Overall, I find the poem highly relevant to today's world. The aspect that I like the most about the poem is the simplicity with which it conveys a strong message to the readers.