In the Rear-View Mirror

In the Dear-View Mirror by Robert Shaw is a poem which addresses the theme of maturity through the construction of an extended metaphor comparing leaving home to driving away. Shaw explores how the importance of family in the addresses eyes changes as the addressee matures through the use of spatial metaphors. The rear-view mirror becomes a symbol for memory and one’s ability to ‘look back’.
Shaw parallels the first and last lines of the poem to compare and contrast the addressee at the beginning of the journey to the end. At the beginning, the address is “thinking about them as you saw them last” compared to the end where the addressee is “thinking about them as you saw them lasting”. The only difference is between “last” and “lasting” both brought to our attention by the use of end-stopping. The word “last” suggests an end, while “lasting” suggests that there is no end. This parallelism highlights a change in the addressee’s attitude to their family. When first leaving home the addressee views it as the end of family life however, by the end of the poem the addressee comes to the realisation that family is “lasting” and eternal.
The first ten lines of the poem talk about the addressee’s family progressively shrinking in the eyes of the addressee. The family is described to be “standing there behind your back”. “Standing” implies how the addressee does not see their family making any forward progress whilst the addressee is continuously moving forward. This leads to the creation of distance between the two, a spatial metaphor is used by placing the family “behind” the addressee. Shaw does this to diminish the family’s importance. The addressee is now paying attention to what is ahead and therefore loses interest in what is behind. The only way the addressee can ‘see’ his/her family is through a reflection in the “rear-view mirror”. This complex metaphor is used by the author to illustrate how young people often place their family in a ‘side-line’ position once they graduate and leave home.
The “first turn” taken by the addressee is a metaphor of a loss of direction in this ‘journey’, In this phase of the addressee’s life, remembrance of the family is “lost completely” and replaced with meaningless items symbolised by “someone’s windbreak pines” and “a split-rail fence”. The author continues to use a spatial metaphor to illustrate a journey in the car to a journey of life. Eventually the addressee’s life gets back on track expressed by a metaphor of the “wheel straighten[ing]”. The next line starts with the word “nothing” followed by “but”, this isolates the word “nothing” to emphasize the emptiness of the life of the addressee. Shaw’s intentions are to communicate to the reader, how easy it is to lost sight of your goal and lose meaning in your life if you separate your family from your life.
The author uses caesura to suddenly switch he focus of the poem to the road ahead. Shaw creates an image of the addressee driving past “exists following exists” on a motorway. This constructs a metaphor of the addressing driving past opportunities. The author uses the symbol of “amassing a stiff toll” to communicate the idea that there ultimately is a ‘cost’ to driving past all these opportunities. At this point in the poem is the turning point. Shaw uses caesura to bring the reader’s focus to this vital moment in the poem: “Fortunately you carry along with you that higher-powered reflective instrument”. This instrument is in fact the human mind and the mind is not limited by distance or time because “no matter how far down the road you’ve gone” the addressee is still able to “bring them back in view as large as life”. Again, Shaw is using physical size to symbolize the importance one holds in the life of the addressee.
The ability for the addressee to bring family back into the present presents another idea: that the love of family is so powerful it has the ability to defy any distance or time and it is also forgiving and unconditional. This poem ultimately warns young people not to lose touch with family once they become independent.