I like the playful nature with which O’Hara advices parents against sheltering their kids, and this is the tone that he uses throughout the poem. The poem is light-hearted, even funny at times and my favorite line is: “…you would have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up…they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy…” While these lines embody every parent’s worst nightmare, I think that O’Hara is getting his point across because with these sentences, he is urging parents to accept that bad things will happen anyway, and you’re better off amusing your kids, than letting them resent you prematurely.
I think that a veiled threat of resentment is an underlying theme that runs throughout the poem because this seems to be the result when kids are cooped up in their rooms while life is happening in the movie theatres. Resentful kids grow up to be resentful adults who “…grow old and blind in front of a T.V…” probably because no one ever made that 25 cent investment that would give them a shot at finding that pleasant stranger who lives in the “Heaven on Earth Bldg”
While the ideas expressed in “Ave Maria” sound like a recipe for disaster, there is some truth to them because sooner or later, everyone takes a bite of the forbidden fruit and resentment is a horrible burden to add to all of the other troubles and worries that life will surely bring.
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