Pat Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ is a work in which the narrator expresses her sense of isolation from her children. Elena pinpoints language as the source of this growing divide, faulting her Spanish as insufficient, and demonstrating the problems in understanding that the English language generates in her household. Her children speak English well; she does…
Tag: Elena
Elena by Pat Mora: Themes
Language and Languages Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ is concerned with the narrator’s native language of Spanish and the English language of her adoptive country, the United States. For Elena, these two languages are symbolic of the conflict between the familiarity of her native land and the challenges posed by relocating to a new country. The Spanish…
Elena by Pat Mora: Poem Summary
Lines 1–7 Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ does not follow any patterns in terms of formal structure and is not divided into stanzas (a stanza is a unit of poetry, or a grouping of lines that divides the poem in the same way that a paragraph divides prose). There are, however, lines that are linked in terms…