Class 11 English Hornbill Poem 4: Father to Son — Elizabeth Jennings | ASSEB Question Answer
Welcome to HSLC Guru! This page provides complete ASSEB Class 11 English Hornbill Poem 4 question and answer solutions for “Father to Son” by Elizabeth Jennings. The poem deals with the painful theme of the generation gap — a father’s lament that he no longer understands his own grown-up son, even though they live under the same roof. The notes here include a stanza-wise explanation, summary in English and সাৰাংশ in Assamese, poetic devices, NCERT textbook questions, additional short and long answer questions, MCQs, and extract-based questions to help ASSEB Class 11 students prepare thoroughly for their HS First Year exams.
About the Poet — Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001)
Elizabeth Joan Jennings was a British poet born on 18 July 1926 in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. She studied English Language and Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and later worked as a librarian and as a publisher’s reader. She is generally associated with a literary group of the 1950s known as “The Movement”, alongside poets such as Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie and Thom Gunn. The Movement valued clarity, traditional metres, restrained emotion and rationality over experimental modernism.
Jennings was a devout Roman Catholic, and her poetry frequently explores faith, suffering, mental illness, loneliness, friendship and the bonds of family. Her major collections include Poems (1953), A Way of Looking (1955) — for which she won the Somerset Maugham Award, A Sense of the World (1958), Recoveries (1964), The Mind Has Mountains (1966), Collected Poems (1986) and New Collected Poems (2002). She was awarded the CBE in 1992. The poem “Father to Son” is taken from her collection Recoveries and is one of her best-known short lyrics on family relationships.
Summary (English)
“Father to Son” by Elizabeth Jennings is a deeply moving dramatic monologue in which a father laments the emotional distance that has grown between him and his adult son. Although they have lived in the same house for years, the father confesses that he does not understand his child and feels as if a stranger were sharing his home. He looks back at the son he once raised and finds nothing of that little boy left in the grown-up before him. The father longs to start afresh, to share the same world and speak the same language, but he cannot bridge the silence between them. He compares himself to a sower whose seed has fallen on stony ground — the love and care he gave have not flowered into closeness. The son, too, is troubled and silent. In the final lines the speaker realises that both of them, father and son, would do anything to forgive and embrace each other, yet they are trapped in mutual pain, holding out empty hands. The poem is a haunting study of the generation gap, parental regret, communication breakdown and the helplessness that lies at the heart of many parent-child relationships.
সাৰাংশ (Assamese Summary)
এলিজাবেথ জেনিংছৰ “Father to Son” কবিতাটো এজন পিতৃৰ মৰ্মস্পৰ্শী আত্মবিলাপ, য’ত তেওঁ নিজৰ ডাঙৰ-দীঘল হোৱা পুতেকৰ সৈতে গঢ়ি উঠা মানসিক দূৰত্বৰ কথা ব্যক্ত কৰিছে। বহু বছৰ একে ঘৰতে একেলগে থকাৰ পিছতো পিতৃয়ে অনুভৱ কৰে যে পুতেকক তেওঁ এতিয়া আৰু চিনিব নোৱাৰে — পুতেক যেন এজন অচিন মানুহ। তেওঁ যিজন সৰু লৰাক ডাঙৰ-দীঘল কৰি তুলিছিল, সেই লৰাজনৰ এতিয়া কোনো চিন তেওঁ পুতেকৰ মাজত বিচাৰি নাপায়।
পিতৃয়ে পুনৰ এক নতুনকৈ আৰম্ভণি কৰিব বিচাৰে, একে পৃথিৱীত একেটা ভাষাৰে কথা পাতিব বিচাৰে; কিন্তু দুয়োৰে মাজৰ নিৰৱতা ভাঙিব নোৱাৰে। তেওঁ নিজকে এনে এজন বীজ সিচা কৃষকৰ লগত তুলনা কৰে যাৰ বীজ শিলযুক্ত মাটিত পৰিল আৰু ক’তো গজিল-ফুলিল নহল। পুতেকো সমানেই কষ্টিত আৰু মৌন। কবিতাৰ অন্তিম পংক্তিকেইশাৰীত পিতৃয়ে স্বীকাৰ কৰিছে যে দুয়োৱে ইজনে সিজনক ক্ষমা কৰিবলৈ, সাবটিবলৈ যিকোনো কাম কৰিবলৈ প্ৰস্তুত — তথাপি দুয়ো একে পীড়াৰে পীড়িত হৈ খালী হাত আগবঢ়াই থিয় হৈ আছে। কবিতাটোৱে প্ৰজন্মৰ ব্যৱধান, পিতৃ-পুতেকৰ মাজৰ আত্মীয়হীনতা, যোগাযোগৰ অভাৱ, অনুতাপ আৰু অসহায়তাৰ এক হৃদয়স্পৰ্শী চিত্ৰ অংকন কৰিছে।
Stanza-wise Explanation
Stanza 1
I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small.
Explanation: The father begins with a painful confession — he does not understand his son, even though they have shared the same house for many years. The phrase “this child” is striking because the boy is no longer small; the father seems unable to accept his son as the grown-up person he has become. To recover the bond he has lost, the father tries to “build up a relationship” from his memories of the boy when he was little. This stanza immediately establishes the central theme of the poem: emotional estrangement between parent and child despite physical closeness.
Stanza 2
Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there’s no sign
Of understanding in the air.
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.
Explanation: The father wonders, in agricultural imagery, whether he himself “killed the seed” — that is, ruined the bond — or whether he sowed it on land that belongs to his son and not to him. The metaphor suggests that the son has grown into his own private world from which the father is excluded. They “speak like strangers” with no understanding between them. Although the boy has been “built to my design” (he has the father’s blood and upbringing), the things he loves now are completely foreign to the father. Genetic and biological closeness has not produced emotional closeness.
Stanza 3
Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.
Explanation: Silence — the inability to communicate — surrounds the father and son. The father wishes his son could be like the prodigal son of the biblical parable, who, after wandering away, returned home repentant to his father. The father would rather have a son who left and came back than one who is physically present but psychologically distant, building a private world of his own. He is even ready to forgive his son completely and turn his sorrow into a fresh kind of love. The biblical allusion deepens the emotional weight of the stanza and gives it a near-spiritual longing.
Stanza 4
Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land.
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.
Explanation: Father and son share the same world — the same globe, the same country, the same house — but no longer the same emotional ground. For the first and only time in the poem, the son speaks. His admission is heart-breaking: he himself does not understand why his grief has turned into anger toward his father. The poem closes with one of the most touching images in modern English poetry: father and son both stretch out empty hands, each longing for something to forgive in the other. The hands are empty because love has flown out of them, but the gesture itself is a desperate cry for reconciliation.
Poetic Devices Used in the Poem
| Device | Example from the Poem | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Metaphor | “Yet have I killed / The seed I spent or sown it where / The land is his and none of mine?” | The father compares his parenting to sowing a seed; the son’s heart has become foreign land where the seed cannot grow. |
| Allusion (Biblical) | “I would have / Him prodigal, returning to / His father’s house” | Reference to the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) — invokes ideas of repentance, forgiveness and reunion. |
| Paradox | “I do not understand this child / Though we have lived together now / In the same house for years.” | Living together yet remaining strangers — a contradiction that captures the heart of the generation gap. |
| Oxymoron / Contrast | “empty hand, / Longing for something to forgive” | An empty hand is offered, yet it is full of longing — emotional fullness within emptiness. |
| Personification | “Silence surrounds us” | Silence is given the active power of a wall enclosing both speakers. |
| Simile | “We speak like strangers” | Two relatives behave as if they had never met — emphasises emotional distance. |
| Imagery | Seed, land, prodigal son, empty hands, globe | Rural, biblical and bodily images make the abstract pain concrete. |
| Symbolism | “empty hand” | Symbol of the lost love and broken communication between father and son. |
| Alliteration | “shaping from sorrow”, “make and move”, “build / Up” | Adds music and emphasis. |
| Enjambment | “I know / Nothing of him, so try to build / Up a relationship…” | The thought spills from one line to the next, mirroring the unfinished, unresolved feeling of the speaker. |
| Tone | Sad, regretful, longing, helpless | Reinforces the elegiac mood of the poem. |
| Rhyme Scheme | Roughly ABBABA / variable across stanzas of six lines each | The half-broken pattern echoes the half-broken bond. |
Understanding the Poem (Textbook Questions)
Q1. Does the poem talk of an exclusively personal experience or is it fairly universal?
Answer: Although the poem is presented as a personal monologue spoken by one father about one son, the experience it describes is overwhelmingly universal. The pain of the generation gap — parents finding it difficult to understand their grown-up children and children finding it equally hard to communicate with their parents — is something almost every family eventually faces. Elizabeth Jennings raises a private confession to the level of a common human truth: the failure of communication between parents and children, the silent suffering on both sides, and the longing for forgiveness and reconciliation. Every reader recognises the situation, which is why the poem is treated as a classic statement of the parent–child predicament.
Q2. How is the father’s helplessness brought out in the poem?
Answer: The father’s helplessness is brought out through repeated admissions of failure. He says, “I do not understand this child,” and “I know / Nothing of him.” He tries to rebuild the bond through old memories of his son’s childhood, but the memories cannot replace the present. He is unsure whether he himself “killed the seed” or sowed it in land that no longer belongs to him, indicating self-doubt and guilt. He can no longer share what his son loves, even though the son is “built to my design.” He wishes the son to come back like the prodigal son but knows this will not happen. Most powerfully, the closing lines show him stretching out an “empty hand,” longing for something to forgive — yet unable to take the first step. The whole poem is built on the helpless rhythm of wanting to reach out and not being able to.
Q3. Identify the phrases and lines that convey the distance between father and son.
Answer: Several phrases and lines in the poem powerfully convey the emotional distance between father and son:
- “I do not understand this child”
- “I know / Nothing of him”
- “Sown it where / The land is his and none of mine”
- “We speak like strangers, there’s no sign / Of understanding in the air”
- “What he loves I cannot share”
- “Silence surrounds us”
- “Rather than see him make and move / His world”
- “We each put out an empty hand, / Longing for something to forgive”
Together these lines build a complete picture of two people who live under the same roof but inhabit completely separate inner worlds.
Q4. Does the poem have a consoling message for both the father and the son?
Answer: Yes, the poem does carry a quiet consolation. Although it dwells mostly on pain, regret and silence, it also assures both father and son that the love between them has not vanished. The father openly admits that he is willing to forgive his son and “shape from sorrow a new love.” The son confesses that he himself does not understand why his grief turns into anger. Both stretch out an empty hand, “longing for something to forgive.” The mere fact that they share this longing means the bond is alive — what is missing is communication, not love. The consolation, therefore, is that reconciliation remains possible if either of them can find the courage to break the silence. The poem ends not in despair but in suspended hope.
Working with Words
Q1. In small groups, discuss the following:
(a) Generation gap is a universal phenomenon.
Answer: The generation gap refers to the difference of attitudes, values, tastes and beliefs between one generation and another, especially between parents and their children. It exists in every culture, country and historical period because each generation grows up in conditions different from those of its parents. New technology, new education, changing economic realities, new political ideas, music, fashion and language all reshape young minds. Parents tend to hold on to the values they themselves were taught, while children naturally test new ones. As a result, conflict, misunderstanding and silence often arise. Jennings’s poem captures exactly this universal human experience.
(b) The role of parents in the lives of children.
Answer: Parents are children’s first teachers, first protectors and first emotional companions. They feed, clothe, educate and guide children through every stage of growth. Beyond the physical, parents shape values, beliefs and character. As children grow into teenagers and adults, however, parents must learn to step back, listen more, lecture less, and respect their children’s individuality. A healthy parent–child relationship needs love, trust, open communication, freedom and forgiveness. The father in the poem fails not in love but in dialogue; this is why his bond with his son slowly turns silent.
(c) Why parents and children find it difficult to understand each other.
Answer: Parents and children find understanding difficult because they belong to different times and have different experiences. Parents tend to view life through the lens of their own struggles and expectations, while children are shaped by an entirely new social and cultural environment. Busy schedules, lack of patience, ego, fear of disapproval, and the inability to express emotions in words all add to the gap. Sometimes the love is real but the language of love differs. As the poem shows, both sides may want to reach out, but pride, anger turning out of grief, and habit keep the silence alive.
Additional Short Answer Questions
Q1. Who is the speaker of the poem?
Answer: The speaker of the poem is a father who is troubled by the emotional gap between him and his grown-up son.
Q2. What does the line “I do not understand this child” mean?
Answer: The line means that although the father has lived with his son in the same house for many years, he no longer understands his thoughts, feelings or way of life. The bond they once shared in the boy’s childhood has weakened.
Q3. Why does the father say, “I know nothing of him”?
Answer: The father says so because, despite living together, he has lost touch with his son’s interests, dreams and emotional world. The boy has grown into a person whose inner life is hidden from him.
Q4. What does the father try to do to recover the bond?
Answer: The father tries to rebuild the relationship by going back to memories of his son’s childhood — recalling how the boy was when small — and using those memories as the foundation for a new closeness.
Q5. What is the meaning of the line, “Yet have I killed / The seed I spent or sown it where / The land is his and none of mine?”
Answer: The father uses the metaphor of a sower. He wonders whether his own mistakes destroyed the love between them or whether the love was sown in land — the son’s heart — that no longer belongs to him. Either way, the seed of relationship has not flowered.
Q6. What does “We speak like strangers” tell us?
Answer: It shows that father and son no longer share the warmth or familiarity of family. Their speech is polite, distant and formal, like that of two unrelated people meeting for the first time.
Q7. What does “This child is built to my design” mean?
Answer: The line refers to the biological and inherited likeness — the son carries his father’s features, blood, and possibly habits. Yet despite this physical similarity, their tastes and inner worlds have grown apart.
Q8. Why does the father wish for his son to be a “prodigal”?
Answer: The father refers to the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, in which a wayward son returns home repentant. The father in the poem wishes his son could come back like that — even after going away — because returning would at least involve reunion. He prefers a returning son to a present but emotionally absent one.
Q9. What does “Silence surrounds us” mean in the context of the poem?
Answer: It refers to the breakdown of communication between father and son. They live together but cannot speak openly about their feelings. Silence has become the only thing they share.
Q10. What does “Shaping from sorrow a new love” suggest?
Answer: It suggests that the father is willing to use his grief as the raw material from which a fresh, deeper love can be built. He hopes that pain itself can become a starting point for reconciliation.
Q11. What does the son finally admit?
Answer: The son admits that he himself does not understand why his sorrow turns into anger. His confession echoes the father’s helplessness and shows that the misunderstanding is mutual.
Q12. What is symbolised by the “empty hand” at the end?
Answer: The empty hand symbolises the absence of love offerings, words of affection or gestures of reconciliation between father and son. Yet the very act of putting out the hand suggests that both still desire connection.
Q13. What is the tone of the poem?
Answer: The tone is sad, regretful, helpless and longing, with an undercurrent of hope at the end.
Q14. What is the central theme of the poem?
Answer: The central theme is the generation gap and the resulting communication breakdown between parents and children, with related themes of regret, loneliness and longing for forgiveness.
Q15. From which collection is the poem taken?
Answer: The poem is taken from Elizabeth Jennings’s collection Recoveries (1964).
Q16. Why does the father feel “anger grows from grief” in his son?
Answer: The father quotes the son’s own confession. The son experiences grief at the broken relationship, and because the grief has nowhere to go, it transforms into anger directed at the father. Both father and son recognise that this anger is rooted in pain, not hatred.
Q17. What kind of poem is “Father to Son”?
Answer: It is a lyric poem written as a dramatic monologue, in which a single speaker — the father — pours out his feelings to an unseen listener. The son’s voice intervenes briefly only in the final stanza.
Q18. How does the poet use natural imagery in the poem?
Answer: Jennings uses agricultural imagery — seed, sowing and land — to describe the relationship. The father is a sower; the son’s heart is the land. Whether the seed died or fell on barren land, the harvest of closeness has not come.
Q19. What is the structure of the poem?
Answer: The poem consists of four stanzas of six lines each (sestets), with a half-rhymed pattern and frequent enjambment. The regular stanza form contrasts with the broken emotion within, mirroring the strained but still intact bond.
Q20. Why is the poem titled “Father to Son” and not “Father and Son”?
Answer: The title “Father to Son” suggests that the poem is the father’s address — words spoken by the father to the son, even if the son does not always reply. It places the father in the position of the one trying to reach out across the silence.
Long Answer Questions
Q1. Discuss “Father to Son” as a poem on the generation gap.
Answer: Elizabeth Jennings’s “Father to Son” is one of the finest modern English poems on the generation gap. The generation gap refers to the differences in values, attitudes, tastes and language between two successive generations, especially parents and their children. In Jennings’s poem the father directly confesses, “I do not understand this child / Though we have lived together now / In the same house for years.” The lines capture the essence of the generation gap — physical closeness without emotional understanding.
The father feels that his son has built a private world in which the father has no place. They “speak like strangers” and there is no “sign of understanding in the air.” Although the son is biologically “built to my design,” the things he loves are foreign to the father. This is exactly how the generation gap works in real life — children grow up in a different cultural and emotional environment, and their parents, anchored in older values, gradually lose access to that world.
The father’s longing to have his son return like the biblical prodigal son shows the depth of his pain; he would forgive everything if only there were communication. The final stanza universalises the experience: the son too admits that he does not know “why anger grows from grief.” Both stretch out empty hands, longing for something to forgive. The poem therefore is not just a personal lament but a wider reflection on a phenomenon every reader recognises. Jennings shows that the generation gap is rarely about lack of love — it is about lack of language, time and listening. By giving voice to the father’s pain and the son’s confused anger, the poem urges every parent and every child to break the silence before it hardens into permanent estrangement.
Q2. Bring out the use of imagery and symbolism in “Father to Son”.
Answer: Imagery and symbolism are central to the emotional power of “Father to Son”. The poem could easily have remained a flat complaint about a difficult son; instead, Jennings raises the experience to a near-spiritual level by using a network of carefully chosen images.
The most striking image is agricultural — the father as a sower of seed. He asks whether he has “killed the seed” or “sown it where the land is his and none of mine.” The seed symbolises love, care and upbringing; the land symbolises the son’s heart. The image suggests both the patience of a parent who plants slowly hoping for harvest, and the helplessness of a parent whose harvest never comes.
Another major image is the biblical allusion to the Prodigal Son. By wishing his son to be “prodigal, returning to / His father’s house,” the father invokes the parable in which a forgiving father runs out to embrace his returning son. The reference deepens the religious and emotional resonance of the poem. The father is not just any father — he is every parent who would do anything for the chance of reunion.
The image of “silence” surrounding both characters works as personification: silence is not absence of sound but a presence — a wall enclosing two people who cannot speak. The “globe” and “land” expand the setting from house to world, suggesting that the conflict is universal. Finally, the image of “empty hands” stretched out at the end is the poem’s most haunting symbol. Hands traditionally hold gifts, food, weapons, words, blessings; here they hold nothing. Yet the very gesture of stretching out is hopeful — both still want to give and to receive forgiveness. Jennings’s symbols — seed, land, prodigal, silence, empty hand — together transform a private complaint into a universal poem about love, loss and longing.
Q3. Critically analyse the relationship between father and son as portrayed in the poem.
Answer: The relationship between father and son in Elizabeth Jennings’s “Father to Son” is one of love that has lost the language of love. The two characters live in the same house, yet they exist in different emotional countries. The father admits straight away, “I do not understand this child,” and “I know nothing of him.” His ignorance is not chosen; it has settled silently over the years.
The father tries to recover the bond by retreating into memory — the boy “when small.” He hopes that the past can supply what the present has taken away. But memory cannot replace dialogue; the present son is no longer the past child. The father then turns to self-doubt and guilt, asking whether he himself ruined the relationship or whether his son’s heart became land that does not belong to him. Both possibilities torment him.
The relationship is also marked by paradox. Although the son is biologically “built to my design,” his tastes are alien to the father. Although they share the same house, they “speak like strangers.” Although the father wishes to forgive, he cannot reach the son. The son’s only line — “I cannot understand / Myself, why anger grows from grief” — confirms that the breakdown is mutual, not one-sided. Both are victims, not villains.
The relationship is therefore best described as a quiet tragedy of communication. There is no scandal, no betrayal and no major event — just years of small silences hardening into estrangement. Yet the closing image of “empty hands longing for something to forgive” rescues the poem from despair. The hands are empty, but they are out; both father and son still face each other; reconciliation is still possible. Jennings holds up this fragile possibility as a mirror for every family that has allowed silence to grow between its members.
Q4. How does Elizabeth Jennings use Christian / biblical references in “Father to Son” and what do they add to the poem?
Answer: Elizabeth Jennings was a devout Roman Catholic, and many of her poems carry a quiet religious undertone. In “Father to Son”, the most direct biblical reference is the parable of the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15. In this parable, a younger son demands his inheritance, leaves home, wastes his fortune in distant lands, suffers, and finally returns to his father — who, instead of punishing him, runs out, embraces him, and celebrates his return.
By saying, “I would have / Him prodigal, returning to / His father’s house,” the father in the poem aligns himself with the forgiving father of the parable. He is willing to forgive, willing to forget every wrong, willing to “shape from sorrow a new love.” The reference adds three things to the poem.
First, it raises the emotional stakes by setting the situation against a famous story of mercy and reconciliation. Second, it makes clear that the father’s love is unconditional — he is not blaming his son but waiting to embrace him. Third, the agricultural imagery of seed and barren land also has biblical echoes (the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13), where the seed sown on stony ground does not grow. The father, like the sower, has done his work but the harvest has failed.
These religious undertones turn an everyday family tension into something larger and more universal. They remind the reader that human relationships, like spiritual relationships, depend on forgiveness. They give the poem its almost prayerful tone — a father praying, in his own quiet way, for the return of the son he loves but no longer understands.
Q5. Comment on the language, structure and style of the poem.
Answer: “Father to Son” is written in a deceptively simple language that reflects Elizabeth Jennings’s connection with the Movement poets, who valued clarity and emotional honesty above linguistic experimentation. There are no obscure words, no complicated syntax, no elaborate metaphors — yet every line cuts deeply.
The poem is built of four sestets (six-line stanzas) with a loose rhyme scheme and frequent half-rhymes — for example, “child / build”, “sown / mine / sign / design”, “have / move / love”. The rhyme is regular enough to give the poem a steady musical pulse, but irregular enough to feel slightly broken — mirroring the broken bond inside.
Enjambment is used freely. Sentences run from one line to the next — “I know / Nothing of him, so try to build / Up a relationship from how / He was when small.” This unbroken flow imitates the way the father’s thoughts spill out without proper punctuation in his head. The use of first person — “I do not understand”, “I know”, “I would have” — gives the poem the immediacy of a confession. Only at the end does the son’s voice intrude briefly, which makes that intrusion all the more powerful.
Jennings prefers monosyllabic words for emotional weight (“I know / Nothing of him”, “We speak like strangers”, “Silence surrounds us”) and uses imagery sparingly. The result is a poem that feels both personal and restrained, both modern and timeless. The language matches the subject: the father is a quiet, reflective man, and the poem reads exactly like the inner monologue of such a man — unhurried, regretful, longing.
Q6. What lessons can young readers learn from the poem?
Answer: Although “Father to Son” is spoken by a father, it carries powerful lessons for young readers as well. First, the poem reminds us that silence between parents and children is dangerous. Years of unspoken feelings can harden into estrangement, even when love is still alive on both sides. Second, the poem teaches that misunderstanding is rarely one-sided; the son in the poem suffers as much as the father and admits that his anger is born of grief. Children who recognise this in themselves can choose to break the silence rather than let it grow.
Third, the poem demonstrates the value of forgiveness. The father is willing to forgive everything. Most parents are. Children should be willing to take the first small step of speaking, listening or simply spending time. Fourth, the poem reminds young readers that parents are not enemies but fellow human beings carrying their own fears, regrets and hopes. Finally, the image of empty hands stretched out at the end is a powerful symbol of the readiness for reconciliation that exists in every troubled family. Young readers should learn that an empty hand is still better than a closed fist; it shows willingness to receive, willingness to give. By breaking silence early, by speaking with kindness, and by accepting differences, the gap between generations can be narrowed before it becomes a wound.
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
1. Who is the poet of “Father to Son”?
(a) Robert Frost
(b) Elizabeth Jennings
(c) Walt Whitman
(d) Sylvia Plath
Answer: (b) Elizabeth Jennings
2. Elizabeth Jennings is associated with which literary movement?
(a) Romantic Movement
(b) Imagism
(c) The Movement
(d) Beat Generation
Answer: (c) The Movement
3. From which collection is “Father to Son” taken?
(a) A Way of Looking
(b) Recoveries
(c) The Mind Has Mountains
(d) Collected Poems
Answer: (b) Recoveries
4. The speaker of the poem is:
(a) The son
(b) The mother
(c) The father
(d) The narrator
Answer: (c) The father
5. The poem is mainly about:
(a) War
(b) Generation gap
(c) Love at first sight
(d) Friendship
Answer: (b) Generation gap
6. How long have the father and son lived together?
(a) A few weeks
(b) A few months
(c) For years
(d) Just a year
Answer: (c) For years
7. What does the father try to use to rebuild the relationship?
(a) Letters
(b) Memories of his son’s childhood
(c) Money
(d) Travel
Answer: (b) Memories of his son’s childhood
8. The metaphor of the seed represents:
(a) Anger
(b) Money
(c) Love and care given by the father
(d) The son’s career
Answer: (c) Love and care given by the father
9. “We speak like ____” — fill in the blank.
(a) friends
(b) brothers
(c) strangers
(d) enemies
Answer: (c) strangers
10. “This child is built to my design” suggests:
(a) Biological likeness with the father
(b) Physical disability
(c) Mental difference
(d) Career choice
Answer: (a) Biological likeness with the father
11. The biblical reference in the poem is to:
(a) The Sermon on the Mount
(b) The Prodigal Son
(c) The Last Supper
(d) The Crucifixion
Answer: (b) The Prodigal Son
12. The father wishes his son to be “prodigal” because:
(a) He wants money returned
(b) He wants the son to come back home
(c) He wants the son to leave forever
(d) He wants the son to be rich
Answer: (b) He wants the son to come back home
13. “Silence surrounds us” is an example of:
(a) Simile
(b) Personification
(c) Hyperbole
(d) Euphemism
Answer: (b) Personification
14. “Shaping from sorrow a new love” means:
(a) Building new love out of the pain of separation
(b) Forgetting the son completely
(c) Marrying again
(d) Loving someone else
Answer: (a) Building new love out of the pain of separation
15. The son says he does not understand:
(a) Why his father is angry
(b) Why his anger grows from grief
(c) Why he is hungry
(d) Why he is sleepy
Answer: (b) Why his anger grows from grief
16. The image of “empty hand” stands for:
(a) Hunger
(b) Wealth
(c) Lost love and longing for forgiveness
(d) War
Answer: (c) Lost love and longing for forgiveness
17. The tone of the poem is:
(a) Joyful
(b) Angry
(c) Sad and regretful
(d) Sarcastic
Answer: (c) Sad and regretful
18. How many stanzas are there in the poem?
(a) 3
(b) 4
(c) 5
(d) 6
Answer: (b) 4
19. Each stanza has how many lines?
(a) 4
(b) 5
(c) 6
(d) 8
Answer: (c) 6
20. The poem is best described as a:
(a) Sonnet
(b) Ballad
(c) Lyric / dramatic monologue
(d) Epic
Answer: (c) Lyric / dramatic monologue
21. The land in the metaphor “the land is his and none of mine” represents:
(a) The son’s farm
(b) The son’s inner world / heart
(c) The son’s school
(d) The son’s friends
Answer: (b) The son’s inner world / heart
22. The poem suggests that the cure for the generation gap is:
(a) Punishment
(b) Money
(c) Communication and forgiveness
(d) Separation
Answer: (c) Communication and forgiveness
23. Elizabeth Jennings was awarded:
(a) Nobel Prize
(b) CBE
(c) Pulitzer Prize
(d) Booker Prize
Answer: (b) CBE
24. Which of the following best describes the relationship between father and son in the poem?
(a) Hostile but distant
(b) Loving but unable to communicate
(c) Indifferent and cold
(d) Joyful and close
Answer: (b) Loving but unable to communicate
25. The mood at the end of the poem is:
(a) Total despair
(b) Total joy
(c) Sad longing with a hint of hope
(d) Indifference
Answer: (c) Sad longing with a hint of hope
Extract-Based Questions
Extract 1
“I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small.”
(i) Who is the speaker of these lines?
Answer: The speaker is the father.
(ii) What is the speaker’s main complaint?
Answer: The speaker complains that, despite living with his son in the same house for years, he no longer understands him.
(iii) How does the father try to build the relationship again?
Answer: He tries to build the relationship by going back to memories of how his son was when he was small.
(iv) What poetic device is used in “I do not understand this child / Though we have lived together”?
Answer: Paradox — living together yet remaining strangers is contradictory.
Extract 2
“Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there’s no sign
Of understanding in the air.”
(i) What does “the seed I spent” stand for?
Answer: It stands for the love, care and effort the father invested in raising his son.
(ii) What does “the land is his and none of mine” mean?
Answer: It means that the son’s heart and inner world have become foreign territory to which the father no longer has access.
(iii) Identify the figure of speech in “We speak like strangers”.
Answer: Simile — the father compares their conversation to that of strangers using “like”.
(iv) What feeling does this stanza express?
Answer: It expresses self-doubt, guilt and a deep sense of estrangement.
Extract 3
“This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.
Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he knew.”
(i) What is meant by “This child is built to my design”?
Answer: It refers to the biological and inherited likeness — the son carries the father’s blood, features and possibly habits.
(ii) Why can’t the father share what the son loves?
Answer: The son has grown into a different cultural and emotional world; his interests, tastes and beliefs are no longer the same as the father’s.
(iii) What is the biblical allusion here?
Answer: The reference to the “prodigal returning to his father’s house” alludes to the parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke.
(iv) What does “Silence surrounds us” suggest about the father–son relationship?
Answer: It suggests a complete breakdown of communication; both are surrounded by emotional silence.
Extract 4
“Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land.
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.”
(i) Who speaks the line “I cannot understand / Myself, why anger grows from grief”?
Answer: The son speaks this line, in his only direct utterance in the poem.
(ii) What does the son admit?
Answer: He admits that even he himself cannot explain why his sorrow turns into anger directed at his father.
(iii) What is symbolised by the “empty hand”?
Answer: The empty hand symbolises the absence of love-offerings, words, and gestures of affection between the two — yet stretched out, it shows readiness for reconciliation.
(iv) What is the central feeling at the end of the poem?
Answer: The central feeling is sad longing combined with a fragile hope for forgiveness.
Themes of the Poem
- Generation Gap: The central theme is the gap between father and son’s worlds — a gap created by age, time, changing values and changing experiences.
- Parent–Child Estrangement: Despite biological closeness and shared living space, the two remain emotionally cut off from each other.
- Communication Breakdown: Words have failed; what dominates is silence. The poem shows how lack of dialogue slowly erodes love.
- Longing and Regret: The father longs for his son’s return to closeness and regrets that something has gone wrong; the son too feels grief but expresses it as anger.
- Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Both father and son extend an empty hand, “longing for something to forgive.” The poem suggests that forgiveness is the only bridge over the silence.
- Memory vs Present Reality: The father retreats into the past, but the past cannot replace the present. True reconciliation must happen in the now.
- Universality of Family Pain: The use of “we” at the end (“we both must live”) universalises the experience — every family lives in some version of this poem.
Conclusion
Elizabeth Jennings’s “Father to Son” is a quiet, restrained yet emotionally powerful poem that captures one of the deepest human pains — the distance that can grow between people who love each other most. Through simple language, agricultural imagery and biblical allusion, the poet shows that the generation gap is not really about age but about silence, missed conversations and the slow hardening of misunderstandings. The poem’s lasting message is that love, however buried, survives — and that the willingness to extend even an empty hand can be the first step towards healing. For ASSEB Class 11 students, this poem is a wonderful starting point to think about their own relationships with their parents and to understand that the way to close every generation gap begins with one honest conversation.
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