Lesley Choyce's On Becoming A Canadian Citizen

Poems communicate emotions, which make connections to the readers. Lesley Choyce’s “On Becoming A Canadian Citizen” is about a narrator’s view of renouncing his status as an American citizen. To understand the emotions of the poem, it will help the readers to paraphrase it so that they can find the meaning in a literal level. Also, the use of literary devices will assist the readers to find meaning in an interpretative level. The poem must reflect something in regards to Canadian character, which can reveal through its theme and tone. The poem, then, reveals emotions and descriptive words to effectively convey something about Canadian identity. The poem begins in the first stanza, in which he “[gives] up on the tired, malignant love of America, [and desiring] the cold of the purifying north” (Choyce, 2-3). He reveals that it is good to stay in a foreign country, forgetting

Becoming a Canadian provides an anticipation of beginning a new life, but they demand more than a “professed loyalty” (26). In other words, giving up American citizenship may be comfortable experience, “[pretending that he is] no longer what he was” (5). Although “friends will be there / [to] invent a new country” (17-18), there is a suspicion that they “will question [his] politics” (25). There is more space for the narrator to prove himself that he will embrace his identity as Canadian by “[stretching] thin against an empty sky” (22). This poem invokes a cheerful tone at the beginning, but it becomes pessimistic at the end because of the words “will question” (25) and “want more professed loyalty” (28). The use of first person voice is advantageous since the narrator can express his feelings of accepting Canadian citizen, but requiring more than that. As a result, the readers may feel either a sense of sympathy or sense of doubt to the narrator. Thus, the poem tells that becoming a Canadian is a