father returning home summary

: The poem, Father Returning Home is based on the themes of estrangement and alienation faced by the old people in their twilight years. Dilip Chitre pays attention to his own father’s loneliness and isolation from the man-made world.

The speaker begins by describing the daily routine of his father. On his way back home after an exhausting day, the speaker’s father travels on the late evening train. He does not engage in any conversations with the other commuters in the train. The silence and the unseeing eyes of the speaker’s father show that he is a lonesome human who finds little joy in the company of others. 

The soggy shirt and pants imply that his job requires a lot of hard work. The father’s muddied raincoat and the dilapidated bag also mean that his own mental and physical state is in a terrible condition. Burdened by the load of work and tired of leading a life of monotony, the speaker’s father is a classic example of the modern man caught in the clutches of a meaningless existence and deprived of all spiritual joy. 

Back to home, the father resumes his same routine of drinking weak tea, eating a stale chapati and reading a book. The speaker observes his father contemplating about the paradox of man’s existence. “Man’s estrangement from a man-made world” here refers to the paradox of man’s existence. Though humans have themselves created their society and chosen to toil each day, most humans remain aloof and alienated from this world that is their own creation. 

His body too seems to be giving up on him as he trembles while walking and has greying hair on his wrists. He is deprived of familial joys because of an emotional rift between him and his children. The speaker’s father is thus a tired man deprived of happiness and weighed down by the unchanging nature of human life. No hopes or joys come his way and he is burdened by the monotony of a dull life. 

The subject of this poem is a father figure who can be equated to any man in today’s world. His life routine can be paralleled to that of any modern day human living a meaningless life in midst of a spiritual crisis. The poem is as much a depiction of the mid-life existential crisis of a hardworking father, as it is a comment on the modern man’s dilemma over his meaningless life. The modern man leads a life with no spiritual or emotional fulfilment, which drains out all his zest and zeal to enjoy life. 

Note: Dilip Chitre highlights the daily routine and schedule of his father to portray the isolation and suffering hiding inside his father. His father remains isolated from both, the family and the man-made world

The poem is a Dramatic Monologue, that involves dramatic speech presented by a person to his own self or presented by someone else to reveal the opinion of the writer.

Dilip Chitre was a famous writer, painter and filmmaker of Post-Independence India. His poem, Father Returning Home talks about an aged man, who is left in isolation by his family members in a modern city. The aged man is forced to live in the modern world, even though he reflects his traditional values and roots. You can understand Chitre’s explanation of the aged man’s estrangement from the man-made world by looking at his daily routine; The aged man wears a black coat but chooses to wear traditional chappals even in the rainy season, he carries a bag full of books and travels locally by the train. He doesn’t share much happiness with his children and remains immersed in his books and radio. One thing you can understand by his schedule is that he tries to keep himself distant from the man-made world and is lost in his own misery and loneliness. He doesn’t share the same ideas or the modern world as his children.