For similarities, both poems talk about father-and-son relationships. Both of the boys in the poem have gone through a bitter experience which mainly involve their fathers. The ten-year-old boy in " The Lesson" has gone through a bitter experience because of his father's death. The boy goes through a series of emotions when he knows about his father's death from the headmaster. First of all, he is upset when this sudden news comes to him, and tears began to well up in his eyes, which block the view of his headmaster, as the poem states, " His shiny dome and brown tobacco jar /splintered at once in tears" However, he doesn't actually have any grief over his father's death, since he only "cried for knowledge which was bitterer than any grief." The "knowledge" refers to the fact...