31 pages • 1 hour read
Ave Maria
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Themes
Family Dynamics
Family dynamics form the heart of “Ave Maria.” The very first word of the poem is “Mothers,” alerting the reader to the idea that motherhood and mother-child relationships will play a large role in the story. The entire poem is a cautionary tale against a decaying family and a call to action so the reader won’t let it happen to them.
The speaker acknowledges the mothers by saying “it’s true that fresh air is good for the body” (Line 4) and later, “since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet” (Line 29); we recognize that the mothers are not an enemy front but well-meaning, though sometimes misguided, women who are trying to do the best for their families. However, the poem cautions against these instincts because the result will be children who “grow old and blind in front of a TV set” (Line 34), begrudging the very people who tried to protect them.
The speaker creates an image of the alternative choice: the child is “hanging around the yard / or up in their room / hating you” (Lines 26-28). The final line, “hating you,” seems to be a jump in intensity from the image of hanging around the bedroom, and yet it is this very jump in intensity the speaker is warning against—the way hatred and malice can sneak up on a family and ferment, becoming something greater than its parts. The poem introduces a reciprocal, transactive aspect as well in the line “when you grow old as grow old you must” (Line 7); this suggests that by making the right choices when the children are young, the mothers will be safe and taken care of later in life. If the mothers allow children space and freedom to grow, they won’t take that space forcibly when the mothers need them most. Here we see how the dynamic of a successful family relies on mutual trust and respect rather than parental totalitarianism.
Freedom Versus Constraint
The poem illustrates a constant push and pull between freedom and constraint while raising a child in the best way one knows how. The speaker acknowledges the mothers’ authority in the second line, “let your kids go to the movies” (Line 2); this is not a call for rebellion in the children but a call for compassion and understanding in the parents.
The following lines, “fresh air is good for the body / but what about the soul” (Lines 4-5) remind the mothers that growth and care goes beyond the physical health with which so many parents preoccupy themselves and extend even more essentially into a piece of their being that they need to develop on their own. While caring for the body often involves restriction and boundaries, caring for the soul is often the opposite and involves the act of tearing boundaries down.
The consequence of this is illustrated later in the poem when the grownup children spend their lives experiencing the world through a TV set instead of truly living in it. This creates a contrasting image with the earlier line, which says “they’ll be in some glamorous country” (Line 10). Here we see how the effects of childhood constriction reverberate throughout a person’s adult life—regardless of how healthy and cared for their body might have been in childhood. By allowing the children the freedom to learn, make mistakes, and grow, they end up being healthier and capable of a stronger family relationship.
Sexuality and Self-discovery
The poem deals with the coming-of-age experiences as young people discover sexual awakening and a wider understanding of the world. This becomes especially relevant when you consider the authorial context of the poem being written by a gay man in the 1960s when such awakenings needed to be cloaked in secrecy. The cinema offers a safe place where people just learning who they are can feel at home in their own skin.
The lines about the children being off in “some glamorous country” (Line 10) and “their first sexual experience” (Line 13) show how interrelated these concepts are. Going to the cinema is an introduction to the entire spectrum of worldly pleasures. Through both the sexual experience and the experience of seeing more of the world on screen, the children begin to learn what they enjoy and who they are, planting the seeds of the adults they will grow into.
The closing of the poem reveals who they will become without these essential experiences. The final line, “seeing / movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young” (Lines 35-36) has a double meaning: The grownup children are using television to experience far-off countries and worlds they weren’t able to absorb as children, but there is also an aspect of sexual repression. Here we see that they are vicariously living through friendships and sexual experiences on TV because they weren’t able to form relationships of their own growing up. Therefore, the cinema becomes a place where life is both lived and created.
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