Summary Of Snapping Beans By Lisa Parker

Poetry is a unique form of literature that allows authors to convey important messages in a concise way. Since poets have such a short window to demonstrate a lesson to their audience, it is crucial that they are particular and strategic with each word and piece of punctuation used. All of these small pieces work harmoniously to create a full picture of the poem itself, and the author’s meaning behind it. Lisa Parker’s narrative poem, Snapping Beans, is the epitome of how poetic elements provide the reader with a story and lesson to reflect on in the future. It depicts a young girl who returns to visit her southern and traditional Grandmother after recently attending college. Although she appears to have a strong relationship with her grandmother,

It seems that she is concerned that her grandma will judge her for enjoying these new experiences since they are so different from the values she was brought up with. Parker uses specific word choice, style, and imagery to convey this story and show the contrast between the college girl and the old ways of the grandmother. This demonstrates an overall theme of the antithesis between old and new values and how one grows from leaving a sheltered environment. The theme teaches the reader that it is acceptable to change and develop differently than what your parents believe as long as you stay true to who you are.
Parker is quite decisive with her use of diction in order to highlight the clear contrast between the past and present. She uses choice words to create a sense of old fashioned country values surrounding the grandmother while the narrator has a mix of old and new. The words specifically used to make the readers think

She begins the poem by using words to describe the grandma’s house, all of which revolve around a country lifestyle. For example, she illustrates sitting on a porch swing, while watching the sun, “pushing its pink spikes through the slant of cornstalks” (Lines 3-7). This setting clearly places the two characters in the South, which has a connotation of having traditional customs and ideals. Just like how the mention of religion had an effect on the audience, this triggers the reader to already associate the grandmother with old-fashioned values, which sets up the theme later on in the poem. Parker brings up the opposing new values that the narrator has by depicting the her difficulty accepting her college environment. She mentions that how this struggle is affecting her by saying, “...the nights I cried into the familiar heartsick panels of the quilt she made me” (lines 25-26). This statement begins the narrator’s illustration of college by showing that it has been hard adjusting to a lifestyle that is completely different from everything she is previously familiar with. She continues to talk about her struggles by mentioning, “...how my stomach burned acidic holes at the thought of speaking in class, speaking in an accent, speaking out of turn, how I was tearing, splitting myself apart with the slow-simmering guilt of being happy despite