Sun Poem is about young people coming into their own character. All children imagine being in a land far, far away but the places they see and the reasons why are individually tailored to each child. The settings of our stories, our environments, have great influences on the past, present and future plots of our lives. You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.
We were all children once with wild imaginations of being able “to breed underwater… as if i’s a summarme” (Brathwaite 220). But I think Adam favored the unrestrained life of a fish for a greater reason than simply the ability to breath underwater. What makes him want to live forever and stay underwater for as long as he wished? After my dreams of being a princess locked away in a tree-house tower, I always wanted to go back home because my every-day story had a happy ending. My mother and father kissed me goodnight in our happy home in our safe neighborhood. I never longed for “fishes & wishes & birds” (229) the way Adam did.
By the time I was born, my daddy was long home from Vietnam, I was too young to know anyone that participated in Desert Storm, and none of my friends are involved in the war in Iraq. I have experienced a relatively violence-free existence and hate to even see a dead squirrel in the road. These situations may have left me a little naive to the evils of the world. My overly trusting mind got me into some unforeseen dilemmas. I did finally realize that my environment had become a little shady and was able to change course long before my conclusion. I think this ties directly into Brathwaite’s underlying message in Sun Poem. Culture is indeed how we are made of it and what we have made of it.
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