Mortality and love in Donald Hall's "My Son, the Executioner"

¶ … Son, the Executioner

Donald Hall's poem, "My Son the Executioner," presents us with an image of love that is filled with just enough emotion to kill his father. This is demonstrated through imagery, as the poet looks as his baby son and is suddenly aware of his own immortality. Youth matters no longer as responsibility and mortality come face-to-face in this poem.

The first line tells us what the father's emotion does to him. His love fills him with emotion strong enough to kill him, therefore, he becomes his "executioner" (Hall 1). His unorthodox treatment of the word make it a powerful symbol for the poem's topic. The next lines allow us to see the father holding his son, who is "quiet and small" (3) and yet so powerful to him. Here we see the image of a grown man holding a small baby. In the second stanza, the poet refers to death again, as he mentions his son, calling him an "instrument of immortality" (5). He acknowledges that his son's "cries and hunger document / our bodily decay" (7-8). The next stanza moves to the poet elaborating on this image with factual details about the mother and father, their ages relatively young but suddenly stifled by the sudden life of their child. Before the birth, they "seemed to live forever" (10) but now their baby forces them to realize the mortality as they "start to die together" (12). The executioner is a sweet and gentle one disguised in the face of a baby.