Two poems, one theme

The two poems under consideration both deal with a common theme: family relationships and the human condition. Both poems are the reflections of grown children recalling what they learned from a parent when they were young. In "The Secret Heart" by Robert P. Tristram Coffin, the man reflects on insights he gained about his father's love, and in Evelyn Tooley Hunt's "My Mother Taught Me Purple," the woman reflects on the fact that her mother was not a role model for what she taught her daughter.

Comprised of three, four-line stanzas, "My Mother Taught Me Purple" uses the symbolism of two colors to express its thoughts. The two colors are the drab, gloomy, colorless gray, and the majestic, luxuriant, vibrant purple. The poem's setting is a poor neighborhood made up of monotonous tenement buildings. The impression of the mother is of someone who has been beaten down by the tedium and hardship of her life: "Wash-gray was her circle/The tenement her orbit" (lines 3-4). In spite of her dull life, the mother has a sense of beauty, of a life that is golden and so she tries to teach her daughter "purple,"

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