Monday, April 20, 2015

In the poem "Old Woman's Message," what does the speaker mean by lines 10 and 11?

The speaker, the old woman, is dying and believes she does not have long to live. She sends a message to her two sons, Polin and Manuai, to come to her. We can assume they have left home, left the town where they grew up, perhaps to find work and make their livings elsewhere. The old woman acknowledges their right to do so: "Let them keep the price of their labour." Perhaps the sons have been sending money back to their mother to help support her, but now that she is dying, she needs their emotional support and their physical presence. She doesn't want their financial support anymore--indeed, she will not need it much longer--so she tells them to keep their money.


"Their eyes are mine" has a double meaning. First, because they are her sons, she has passed on to them all of their physical characteristics, including, as the old woman points out, their eyes. Perhaps their eyes resembled hers; if so, every time they look in the mirror, they should be remembering their mother. The old woman uses this connection between herself and her sons as an argument to bring them home. Second, saying "their eyes are mine" is synechdoche--a type of figurative language in which a part represents the whole. The boys' eyes cannot be separated from their bodies; by claiming their eyes, she claims each boy's entire being. Since she has a degree of ownership of her sons because she is their mother, they should come to her now in her hour of need. 


Additionally, an old proverb says that "the eyes are the windows to the soul." In this sense, the old woman, by claiming the eyes of her sons as her own, is claiming their souls, the seat of their emotions. What she longs for as her death draws near is the ability to connect emotionally, soul to soul, with the people she loves most in the world. 

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