Gwen Harwood's "Father and Child" is a two part poem describing the self changes experienced through time within a father and his child.
             In the first part of the poem, we witness a change in self a child as she experiences her first step towards adulthood. In "Barn Owl", a child at a rebellious age, experiments with the constraints of authority in an attempt to seek control for herself, as she sneaks out to kill a barn owl with her father's shotgun. However, this experimentation quickly awakens her to an importnat discovery in her life; the reality of suffering and death as not "clean" but real, bloody and ugly. She "wept" as self-knowledge and self-disgust join together and the child is sickened by what she has callously done. This is a life changing experience for her and an indication that she cannot return to childhood. Thus, to "end what (she had) begun", her father shows sound judgement in his response to her terrible crime. She must be taught to accept resonsibilty for her actions.
             However in "Nightfall", the child "once quick to mischief", forty years on, has grown into a comtemplative adult who has greater understanding of life by picking the "last fruits of the termporal:" the last lessons of time/experience. As an adult about to lose her father, the persona realises she has learned much from him.
             Both characters have changed as indivuals and their reationship and power roles have changed accordingly. The persona no longer sees her father as the powerful "No-Sayer" who ruled her actions but as an "Old King" and "comforter". The father who was once his child's protector and mentor is now the one who requires looking after as he is "blind", "eighty years of age" and "stick-thin". His vulnerability and dependence is furthermore di
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