The Red Hat is about a family watching their son walks to school alone. The speaker speaks about the son walking to school without the parents at his side. It was his first time walking alone and his parents track him as he goes without the son noticing. The speaker, who is also one of the parent showed how much loving and protective parents are, when she used a imagery of them walking on the opposite side of the street. They carefully glances and not making eye contact with him. “Glances can extend (and do) across the street; not eye contact” line 6. After the son and the parents path goes a separate ways, the speaker gives a sense of feeling of the parental love they have for thier son. Although, physically they are not watching him walk to school any further; thier hearts still watches over him.
“The watcher’s heart stretches, elastic in its love and fear, toward him as we see him disappear, striding brisky” line 10
In the last stanza the speaker expresses her feeling of change as it is strange and flimsy. The change of them not walking their son to school instead they watched his “red hat” disappear as he walks away. In my opinion i believe this poem speaks about parenting in a whole. The son going to school alone represents maturity, and all the parents can do is watch their child grows older and independent,
While I was reading this blog post. It reminded me off my parents my mom was always overprotective of me till age 19. Then, finally she just let me go on and be more independent. I honestly I have to agree with shawn on this blog post and his interpretation of the story. Throughout the whole poem we see an image of the parents just watching their son as he goes off to school but then at some point they no longer are making eye contact by just glancing. As stated in that in the poem “Glances can extend (and do) across the street; not eye contact” line 6 as shawn stated physically they are not watching him walk to school any further; their hearts still watches over him.
I see that the poem is trying to saying no matter how much the son or your daughter is independent she or he is like a baby in the eyes of the parent and so they feel they are still watching them as if they are guardian angels and which they are. To add more of an interpretation of what shawn stated perhaps the poem is about parenting. I also believe that Rachel Hands is trying to tell us how parents take care of their children as a baby and then they grow so quickly that they still see their children as a baby in their eyes. It gets to an exciting point where the parents can’t believe how quick their child has grown and now they are scared to let him be independent going to school. Its more that parents feel they are missing their child and wonders how they will adjust being by themselves for once in a change.