Analysis of '' The Cord ''

Practice Essay for Final

“The Cord” by Leanne O’Sullivan is a short poem of open form about a teenage girl and her mother who do not communicate. The speaker’s emphasis on the hours spent by the teen on the phone every night shows how she neglects any form of communication with anyone other than her friends. She especially leaves out of her life her mother, who regardless of that, keeps her distance and respects her privacy. With the help of characters and tropes, the poem asserts that communication is a crucial part of any relationship and without that, it is hard to keep kinships alive.

The characters, in this case the mother and her teenage daughter, of this poem display the importance of communication in relationships throughout the entire poem. To start, the progenitor has no idea whatsoever of what is happening in her daughter’s life. She tries to respect that, to give her space, since it is considered “normal” by society’s norm for a teenager to cut out his or her parents form his or her life. However, she is concerned for her child’s life. Therefore, as stated in the poem, “As long as (the daughter) was speaking she could put my ear to the tenuous earth and allow me to listen, to decipher” (O’Sullivan 23-25). She listens to her daughter’s phone conversations because it is the only way she can have a little insight on what is going on. The mother worries, but afraid to push her daughter further away by trying to communicate, she keeps her distance and she lets her talk on the phone all night long never complaining. She does not even complain about the phone bills, because the mother knew she was at least talking to someone (O’Sullivan 16-17).  In what concerns the daughter, she is the typical teenager. She talks all night long on the phone about hair dye and suicide (O’Sullivan 9). She does not put priority on her study. She keeps to herself and her friends are all that matter. The teenage girl is also depressed. It can be perceived all through the poem as many references to her being in her “own world” or “own realm” are made. She isolates herself from the outside world and only speaks to the people who, as written by the speaker, “[…] recognize(s) the language of our realm.” (O’Sullivan 6-7) That can be understood as her only talking to the crowd who comprehend what she is going through; she seeks comfort form those people instead of talking to her mother, which she shuts out. The relationship between the characters is therefore dysfunctional and disconnected, as if they were living in two different universe and that only because they do not communicate.

In conclusion, the idea that relationships can survive without communications of any sort is absurd. Without it, relations fade and gaps between people are build creating the illusion of living in different worlds. Nowadays, with the up and coming technological industries always thriving to create new things and modern objects, teenagers are prompted more and more into isolation since they do not need the social interactions people from other decades had to have to get what they want. Perhaps, teenagers should be encouraged to be more interactive with the people surrounding them to prevent the next generations to keep going into the downward spiral teens from today are actually following.

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