Analysis Of The Poem Birches And Hanging Fire By...

For some people, their childhood may have been the best time of their lives, but for others, it could just be many years of memories they dread remembering. Regardless of how someone feels about it, childhood is a critical part of life. In the poems â€Å"Birches† by Robert Frost and â€Å"Hanging Fire† by Audre Lorde, the authors explore what it is like to be a child and the major transition from childhood to adulthood. While Frost does so through the voice of an adult, Lorde chose to accomplish this from a child’s perspective. Although, the speakers are not the only aspects of the poem that sets them apart. In â€Å"Birches†, Frost describes childhood as a simplistic, carefree and innocent time, while in â€Å"Hanging Fire†, Lorde emphasizes the never ending struggles children face when growing up. However, the speakers of the poems do share a common challenge in maintaining personal relationships throughout childhood and beyond. In â€Å"B irches†, the speaker thinks of childhood as a time of innocence, where everything is easy going and immaturity is acceptable. Instead of believing that the birches are being bent by ice storms, he likes to picture that they are like that due to an adventurous, carefree child. He specifically says, â€Å"I should prefer to have some boy bend them/ As he went out and in to fetch the cows/ Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,/ Whose only play was what he found himself,/ Summer or Winter, and he could play alone†. Essentially, instead of believing in a