ipl-logo

Poem Analysis Of 'A Story' By Li-Young Lee

869 Words4 Pages

As a parent, it is so hard to watch your child grow older because you would prefer them to stay little forever. Thinking about your child getting older is scary and can often make you forget to truly take in the special moments while they are young. In Li-Young Lee’s poem A Story he represents this parental feeling throughout the entire poem that focuses on the relationship between a father and his son. Li-Young Lee uses different poetic elements throughout the poem to develop the father’s complex attitude towards his relationship with his son, worried for the future, but still cherishing the present. Lee uses shifts in tense as well as assertive diction throughout the poem in order to convey the worrisome attitude that the father has when …show more content…

By shifting into the future tense, it shows that the father is so worried about his son growing up that he is already beginning to think about it while his son is still young, and the thoughts of him packing up his things and leaving his nest overtake the present, which is symbolized by the shift from present tense to future tense. The shift conveys the idea that the father is scared of his son getting older, because he wants to have the same relationship with his son for his entire life. The father’s worried attitude is further developed through assertive diction when the father begs the son to listen to one more story when the poem is in present tense. This diction is seen when Lee writes, “Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more! / You love the spider story. You laugh at …show more content…

Lee begins the story with a description of the father and his son as the young son is wanting another story from him as a way to show what the father is wanting to hold on to. Lee writes, “His five-year-old son waits in his lap. / Not the same story, Baba. A new one.” (Lee 3-4). The image of the son begging his father for new stories shows readers the moments that the father is worried about losing as his son gets older, because he wants these moments to last forever. The father wants to be able to remember moments like these, so he tries to mask the worry of his son getting older with adoration of the special moments he has. He knows these moments won’t last forever, but he doesn’t want the worry to shine through the love he has for his son while he is young. Lee further develops the complexity of the relationship at the end of the poem when he shifts back from future tense into the present tense and writes, “But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?” (Lee 19). The shift back to present tense shows how the father realizes he needs to cherish the time he has with his son now, instead of spending his time worrying about the future. The father realizes that he is scared and nervous for what is to happen to their relationship, but then concludes that he has

Show More
Related
1047 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the poem, the speaker uses his poetic style to reveal a friendly yet distanced relationship that the speaker and father share together. Beginning the poem with “Thirty-three years of coughing thick factory air,” the speaker introduces his father as a diligent factory worker (1-2, Daniels). The use of the alliteration “thirty-three” in this line, strategically draws the reader’s attention to just how long the dad subjects himself to such straining labor in order to provide for his family, showing a love from the father for his child (1). The speaker continues with “of drifting to sleep through the heavy ring of machinery, of twelve hour days” painting the image of the father working nonstop, and as a result, repeatedly falling asleep on the job (3-4). By saying, “In my sleep,

Read More
798 Words | 4 Pages

Oftentimes, God is viewed as a perfect, but unreachable person, which is similar to what the father feels towards his son—that he is not able to be there for him. The distance in their relationship is further touched in the final stanza of the poem, where the father reflects on the question that his son asked him at the beginning. Here, Lee writes, “an earthly rather than heavenly one, / which posits that a boy’s supplications / and a father’s love add up to silence” (Lee 22-23). Lee’s use of the word “supplication”, which is similar to the word “begging”, shows how the father views something as simple as asking for a story as a difficult, almost impossible task. The father not being able to meet the current needs of his child, as he sees the tasks necessary to be something he is incapable of, drives a wedge between their relationship,

Read More
812 Words | 4 Pages

These two lines in the poem make it seem as if words were able to make children fear as well as make them relieved, so the parent had to choose words

Read More
831 Words | 4 Pages

The speaker of the poem walks through a reaping setting, alone. Lee uses the image of a bird who flies quickly away before the speaker can catch glimpse of it: “I turn, a cardinal vanishes”. This matches the memory that the speaker rekindles from earlier that morning, when his deceased father’s image seems to appear within the trees, and disappear again just as his child draws near. Lee beautifully uses concrete language to portray the picture, specifically the throbbing emptiness when the vision is substituted by a “shovel…in the flickering, deep green shade” (18-19). The sad, uncanny sensation showed by the event creates the lonely, sorrowful mood of the

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

For the entire duration of the poem, the reader is able to infer how the complexity of the relationship changes and how the father feels about his son through the techniques and methods stated above. Within A Story, Lee uses point of view from both characters to convey the idea that the father’s relationship with his son is indeed, increasingly complex. The reader also learns from this point of view technique that the time of thought within the poem constantly changes. The boy’s young age is shown clearly in the beginning of the poem as: “His five-year-old son waits in his lap.”

Read More
883 Words | 4 Pages

In the first few lines, Lee draws an image of a “five-year-old son [waiting to hear a story] on his [father’s] lap,”

Read More
784 Words | 4 Pages

In the 1930s few Americans faced harder times than those in the Southern Great Plains. The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s was one of the worst environmental disasters of the Twentieth Century. The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the lives of many people. It came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. Simple acts of life were no longer simple.

Read More
941 Words | 4 Pages

The boy believes that there are still good people in the world and wants to help people instead of running away which the father does. This quote “The boy squatted and put his hand on his shoulder. He’s scared, Papa”(McCarthy 162). The man is scared”. This shows that the boy really wants to help and provide for people, he doesn't want to believe that there are bad people in the world, he trusts in people and wants to help, and when he thinks that he can, he wants to.

Read More
624 Words | 3 Pages

The father’s wife had recently died, leaving him with the boy to take care of with the only mindset of keeping him alive, doing anything for their survival. This affected the father in a big way, leaving him with little hope and hardly any reason to stay alive, but the boy was “his warrant” (McCarthy 5) , his only reason for life. The boy starts out very scared and weak, always wanting to hide behind his father, knowing that one day he will die. The boy matures with every event that happens, and he maintains to have hope throughout most of them. “The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead.

Read More
1004 Words | 5 Pages

The man found his light through the darkness, and that light was his son. The man says, “He only knew that the child was his warrant” (McCarthy, page 5). The man says often that if the boy were to die, he would die as well to be with his son. It’s almost poetic, the son relies on his father to survive, and the father relies on his son to have the strength to keep going and protect them both.

Read More
846 Words | 4 Pages

Comparing and contrasting Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, one finds the two poems are similar with their themes of abuse, yet contrasting with how the themes are portrayed. Furthermore, the speaker 's feelings toward their fathers’ in each poem contrast. One speaker was hurt by the father and the other speaker was indifferent about how he was treated by his father. The fathers’ feelings toward the children are also different despite how each treated the child. Both poems accurately portray the parent-child relationships within an abusive home, even if they have different

Read More
726 Words | 3 Pages

The poem “One Boy Told Me” by Naomi Shihab Nye, was told by her son when he was two and three years of age. His comments, thoughts, and remarks were jotted down verbatim by Naomi and pieced together to create the one of a kind free verse poem. Nye assembled the phrases into individual stanza’s where they coherently flow to one another to illustrate the mind of a toddler. Wide ranges of emotions and personalities invoke the inner child and their curiosity. Overall, her son’s interpretations of his surroundings and understandings are represented in how the idioms expressed set the stage for intrusiveness, humor, and poetic devices to contribute to the overall meaning.

Read More
811 Words | 4 Pages

The father had been given a second chance and makes a choice to take advantage of his chance and make his son late yet again. The mother had lost all trust in the father when he brought his son home late one night because they had been at a nightclub. The father had brought the son to see Thelonious Monk. Which was a band that was popular in this time period.

Read More
793 Words | 4 Pages

The poem “A Story” by Li-Young Lee depicts the complex relationship between a boy and his father when the boy asks his father for a story and he can’t come up with one. When you’re a parent your main focus is to make your child happy and to meet all the expectations your child meets. When you come to realize a certain expectation can’t satisfy the person you love your reaction should automatically be to question what would happen if you never end up satisfying them. When the father does this he realizes the outcome isn’t what he’d hope for. He then finally realizes that he still has time to meet that expectation and he isn’t being rushed.

Read More
657 Words | 3 Pages

Li-Young Lee’s poem “Eating Alone” expresses a son’s loneliness and love for his father that has passed away. He continuously connects the father to all that the speaker does whether it is lifeful or not. Lee does so in a way through imagery, tone, and irony. Li-Young Lee uses imagery in “Eating Alone” through life and death.

Read More

More about Poem Analysis Of 'A Story' By Li-Young Lee

Related Topics

Open Document