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

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

The speaker is the voice of the poem, since “I” is used alot in this poem, it is in first person. I imagined the speaker’s

The most complex relationship one could ever try to understand is the relationship of a child and his or her parents. In the poem, “Our Son Swears He Has 102 Gallons of Water in His Body,” by Naomi Shihab Nye, the speaker effectively portrays the damaged relationship between a child and his parents. The son in the poem believes he knows everything, and his “know-it-all” mentality is the source of the family’s troubles. Through details, imagery, and a shift in the last stanza, the speaker conveys the son’s stubbornness.

That is all I remember for the next five or ten seconds. I woke up about fifteen feet from the grave. I could see every color of the rainbow. My radio was gone. I looked behind me. The radio was about ten or twelve feet away with the antenna sticking out of the water. I began to yell, “Did anybody get a fix?” (A fix was a flash from a mortar or rocket or whatever.) I could not hear myself yell. After about another twenty seconds or so, I began to hear the men in my squad yell, “I’ve been hit, Sgt. Leland. I’ve been hit.”

The author’s word choice is brief; therefore, not too much is mentioned about appearance and description in this particular poem. However, words/dialogue and specifically actions tell the story. For example, the baby smiles whenever the boy picks him or her up. When the boy lies the baby back down, the baby begins to cry. This foreshadows the fear of separation.

His desperation to seek the stability of his father’s nature and his guilt, associated with his failure to reap the rewards of his father’s teachings, creates the tension in their relationship. There is no doubt of his admiration for his father which is supported with both his declaration of love in third stanza and how he described his father in the first. The description of his father also shows the extent of his admiration for his father because, with his knowledge that the future is as unpredictable for his father, he can acknowledge the fact that his father, despite the unknown of the next moment, is prepared to care and protect. The tension of their relationship is create by the son feeling inferior to nature of his father. This feeling of inferiority affects the way the narrator views himself, making this an issue of his own conscious and self-worth rather than with his father.

The son, who is the narrator, tells the story of his mother and father and different worlds they came from. The author employs imagery to compare how his mother and father lived and died and to convey to the reader his alienation from both of them. He refers to his father as a

Many relationships found in the world or in stories exhibit complexities which make even the simplest tasks difficult. Li-Young Lee portrays this idea in his poem “A Story.” In his poem, Lee unfolds a tale of a man who is unable to tell his son the story which he desires. Furthermore, Lee employs devices such as structure and point of view to reveal how a combination of emotions leads the pair to silence.

One of the most treasured days in an adolescent’s life is the day he or she finally has the opportunity to venture into the world outside of the influence of parents. However, young adults often fail to conceive the impact their departure actually has on their parents. It is usually believed that the parents will revel in what their children perceive as a newfound freedom of their own; in reality, it is quite a mournful day for parents. This facet of the parent-child relationship is presented in Li Young Lee’s poem, “A Story,” where he uses a dynamic point-of-view and progressive variations in structure to highlight the pain parents often feel upon separation from those they spent so long nurturing.

The first stanza of the poem introduces the speaker’s perception of what kind of man his father had been during his life. The first two lines detail that his father had suffered hardships in his life or witnessed hardships. The first mentioning in regards to the persona of his father states, “singing each morning out of each night.” The speaker describes his father as someone that despite hardships and suffering, he could make the best out of bad situations, or could turn negative emotions such as despair into hope. Dark nights are often associated with despair and hopelessness, and the speaker's father uses his “astounding singing abilities” to transform the terrible night it into bright morning. It is continued throughout the poem, describing

The poet is disheartened with both the facts. He says that the soldier that fight, especially in the vanguard of the army, have funerals with the rejections of all rituals, for example, no flowers, no candles and not even their dead bodies. He concludes that first the soldiers are not sent but forced to fight in the war and then when they die their funeral is carried out for formality with no respect or even sympathy. He calls these rituals "mockeries" in a bitter and furious tone in the octet of the sonnet and the choruses "shrill, demented" and compares it to the falling of bullets of machine guns on the ground when he says "wailing shells"

In order to better understand this poem and analyses it, we need to understand that the author was trying to tell us a story about his life and his struggle with Deceit. Although this story may seem to be about the death of a little child, and his parents, the overall tone is all based around the fact that the author has an ongoing internal struggle with Deceit and his life.

In The book, the father and the boy’s relationship display a sense of belonging to each other as a family. Through biblical illusion “If he is not the word of God, God has never spoken” exhibit the importance of the relationship between the boy and the father. The father has hope for his son even if this is a post-apocalyptic world where everything is dead. The father believes that the boy “

The poet writes in the first person throughout the poem. He writes about his Father and his Grandfather and he seems to move from describing his Father to describing his Grandfather. He does this so smoothly that the reader harldy notices the transition that took place. The second clue is slightly more hidden. The poet

The poem uses the first person and is written as a dramatic monologue, a well-organized narrative with the speaker’s comments.