As time goes by, plants grow, people age, and eventually, those you care about most will leave you. In the myth of Ceres and Persephone, the god of the harvest loses his mature daughter to the king of the underworld. The narrative continues by showing the prolonged search for his beloved daughter and the emotional upheaval that arises from this brutal situation. “The Grenade” and “The Styx Bistro” illustrate the complex mother-daughter relationship between modern-day Ceres and Persephone; while both poems describe a mother's struggle to accept her daughter's coming of age, Boland shows a mother's eventual acceptance while Dove expresses a mother's denial and struggles against this. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Both works effectively present the similar internal battle that the mother, narrator, and Ceres silently face when she realizes that her daughter is ready to leave and move on. in his life. Both narrators seem to be in denial. In “Grenada,” the speaker “went out into a summer twilight looking for [her] daughter at bedtime. [She] carried her past the white beams and wasps and honey-scented buddleias” (Boland 13-18), creating a feeling of tranquility, almost as if her daughter had never been kidnapped by Hades. It is later revealed that she is fully aware of her daughter's departure as she berates the fruit that will ultimately take her daughter and points out the fact that her daughter "could have come home and been safe and ended to history and to all our broken hearts.” searching but she reached out and picked a pomegranate” (Boland 30-33). The mother is hopeful in the sense that she thinks she can still “warn her [daughter]. There was still a chance” (Boland 42). However, she will end up losing her daughter. “Le Bistro Styx” also shows a mother in denial. The narrator continually asks multiple questions and criticizes her daughter in order to make herself believe that her own daughter is not yet ready to become an adult. Their conversation is cold and brief, almost distant. As in "Grenada", despite her mental struggle to keep her daughter, she too will end up losing her. Boland portrays Ceres as a gentle and accepting mother, patiently waiting and preparing for her daughter to leave her in "Grenada". The mother refers to the myth of Ceres and Persephone several times and states that "the best thing about the legend is [that] she can fit into it anywhere" (Boland 6-7) and has it do. She too was “a child in exile in a city of mists and strange consonants” (Boland 8-9) and knows what it will be like for her daughter. She herself is a young girl who is also reaching the prime of her life, although this time it is different. The speaker will now experience a mother's pain when her child takes a separate path rather than the child's joy of entering the world as an adult. Instead of fighting it, she accepts it. The mother is aware that her daughter's time will come and patiently prepares for it as she "stands where [she] can see [her] child sleeping next to her teen magazines, her can of Coke , from his plate of uncut fruit” ( Boland 26-28). The mother knows that “the legend [of Ceres and Persephone] will be that of her [daughter] as well as her own. [His daughter] will enter there. As [did]” (Boland 50-51) and accepts it peacefully knowing that one day his daughter “will hold the skin reddened like paper in her hand. And to his lips. [But she] won’t say anything” (Boland 52-54). In "The Bistro Styx", Dove shows Ceres as a seemingly harsh and critical mother who feverishly attempts to.