Angel Fang
Daniel Hayes
English Composition
11 April 2025
Poetry Analysis Paragraph
In the poem “My Son the Man” written by Sharon Olds, the speaker expresses his little sorrow about his son’s growth. Olds uses imagery and metaphor to express the theme that it is excruciating to see children growing up and stop relying on their parents. The spreader notes, “Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider, / the way Houdini would expand his body/ while people were putting him in chains”, finding the similarity between his son’s growth and Harry Houndini’s escape acts. By comparing these two people together, Olds suggests that his son is trying to escape from his father’s protection. The escape of his son suggests that he has stopped relying on his father and even seeing his father as shackles, which lays the foundation for the grief the poet expresses in later verse and highlights the hardship of growth and independence for parents. Besides, right after describing the current status quo of his son, Olds uses imagery to vividly describe the scene that he used to lift his son up. As a father, he used to “… toss him up and / catch his weight”. The verb “toss” and “catch” implies that his size of his son is small and he is able to lift him up, putting a contrast between the wide shoulder of his son and his younger version, which sheds a light on how much his son has grown, which showed his pride about his son being a real man. The happy scene of father and son playing together also helps build up the poet’s sorrow about the unavoidable moment of his son being mature enough to leave him. Old’s good use of contrasting imagery and metaphor vividly describes his son’s growth, which leads to his expression of sorrow about his grownup son leaving him.