Explicating ” The Elder Sister “

The Elder Sister

 

            , the author of the poem The Elder Sister, presented in her poem a younger sister’s feelings toward her elder sister who came out of their mother’s womb ahead of her. The author describes how a younger sister sees her elder sister.

            The author wrote the poem in the first person. The author writes as if she is in the shoes of the younger sister who is describing how she feels and thinks about her elder sister.

            In the first few lines, the author describes literally how the younger thinks her elder sister was born. The author did an anatomical description of how as a baby the elder sister was born. The author likened the birth of the elder sister to someone who has just come out of a tomb after a long time.

The author mentioned in her poem how the pressures of their mother’s muscles made her elder sister look like that. She also likened her elder sister’s eyes to someone who has been in prison a long time and knows they can send her back. Perhaps in the eyes of her elder sister, she saw the fear of being exposed to another world, yet happy to stay there and afraid to go back to the old world.

The younger sister expressed that “By the time mine came along, the were just two more birds on the flock, and when the hair rose on the white mound of her flesh, like threads of water out of the ground, it was the first time, but when mine came they knew about it.” She was referring to the concept of womanhood – the physical transformation that comes with it. By the time the younger sister reached those years, her parents and other family members are already aware of what it would be like for her. They have already experienced the same with her elder sister.

At first this has made the younger sister somewhat jealous. She felt negative emotions towards her sister. She used to think only in terms of harshness with regards to the fact that she is not the first one and therefore everyone already knows what these are all about.

Then she realized that somehow her elder sister has been more than good to her. She saw that she “had her elder sister before her always like a shield.” Perhaps the author did not mean this literally as when she wrote “the blows that did not reach me.” By blows she meant, consequences of certain actions which her sister have done ahead of her and which she has somehow learned through her sister.

In the poem, the younger sister likened her elder sister to a protector who is always there for her. And someone whose experiences are also something which she can learn from.

Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com