Summary
Summary Gr 12 Poetry - "What Life is really like"
- Course
- Institution
The notes is about the poem "What Life is really like"
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
OpsommingsSummaries
Reviews received
Content preview
What life is really likeby
Beverly Rycroft
, About the poet
Beverly Rycroft (South Africa) was born in 1959 in Stutterheim,
Eastern Cape, and she now lives in Cape Town with her family.
She is a graduate of the University of Cape Town and the University
of the Witwatersrand. She worked as a teacher for several years
before turning full time to writing and journalism. Her articles have
been published widely both locally and internationally. Her debut
poetry collection, missing, won the 2012 Ingrid Jonker award. In
she was awarded the Thomas Pringle Prize for best poem in a
journal.
In 1997 Beverly Rycroft was diagnosed with stage three breast
cancer. The themes of the poems in her debut collection, missing,
relate to the experience of facing mortality, illness and the hope of
recovery.
Our poem deals with the poet’s relationship with her father, a
university lecturer, who feels that she should know that the world
is not a kind place, and that she should “toughen up”. To “teach”
her about life, he wants to involve her in experiences that show
suffering, pain and death. However, the father becomes more
reflective, silent, when faced with her own suffering with breast
cancer.
, SUMMARY OF POEM
The poet remembers how her father would try to toughen her up
in order to face the inevitable difficulties that life would bring her.
He tells her that he “ought” to make her face the reality of a
chicken having its head chopped off. He makes her hold an
injured pigeon as he helps it. He tell her that life is a fight for
survival and that she, the poet, must be ready to deal with
whatever life throws at her. The poet waits for her father’s
prediction to come true – that there will be something hard with
which she will have to deal. It eventually comes in the form of
breast cancer. When she comes home from hospital, her father
is there to gently dress her wounds and look after her. He never
speaks of the lessons that he tried to teach her as she is now
living out the lessons that have prepared her to meet her own
fight for survival.
, STANZA 1 1
2
You need to toughen up
my father would complain
3 when I was small
4 I ought to take you to see
5 chickens having their heads
6 chopped off.
7 That’d teach you
8 what life is really like.
STANZA 2 9 He’d seek me out
10 when one of his pigeons
11 -crazed for home or
12 mad with terror from a
13 roaming hawk –
14 would tumble into
15 the loft
16 mutilated by
17 wire or beak.
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller OpsommingsSummaries. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $2.85. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
75759 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now