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Coming Of Age In Li-Young Lee

Decent Essays

The Coming of Age In the eyes of children, their parents are saviors; are heroes; are the best thing that has ever happened to them. In the eyes of parents, their children are perfect; are leaders; are the best thing that has ever happened to them. The interactions between a child and his parents over the course of a lifetime remain eternal: especially between a father and son. Li-Young Lee elucidates this relationship between a father and a son in “A Story.” He presents an affectionate relationship between the two of them; however, simultaneously portrays complexity in this relationship as the father struggles to share a “new story” with his son. Worried about his son giving up on him, the father becomes frantic while envisioning a fantasized …show more content…

Language such as “Sad is the man,” “The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear,” “give up on his father,” are all phrases showing fear and disappointment in the father because he can’t create a new story to tell his son. The utilization of these phrases gives us insight on how the father seems to be distracted from telling a story because he is “in a room full of books in a world of stories,” yet he cannot recall a single story. This engulfs the father in anxiousness because he is unable to share a story or pass on any lessons that his son needs. He strives to be a father who is the crème de la crème, but worries that he will fall short in his son’s view, eventually disappointing him and causing him to leave. Yet, the father reveals a shift in tone from worried and disappointed to enraged and frustrated because he envisions a future where his son leaves him. Form phrases like, “Don’t go!”, “Are you a god, the man screams,” and “he sees the day this boy will go,” we understand that the poet emphasizes feelings of dread and anger in the father because he was not the father his son could look up to. He screams in frustration as he ponders whether his son views him as a superior being who doesn’t disappoint, which he knows he failed at. The father struggles with the fact that a time will come when kids grow up and a certain relationship changes …show more content…

The poet conveys the complex relationship through the length of each stanza, Throughout the poem the number of lines in each stanza increases which represents the escalation of varying emotions within the father. The first three stanzas introduce the situation with an average of three lines in each stanza revealing the father’s rise in emotions. As the poem progresses, the father starts to generate an imagination where he loses a relationship with his son due to his disappointment. He has thoughts such as “he thinks the boy will give up on his father,” revealing a sense of lost hope in the father because he can’t recall a single story. Despite the son calling him “Baba,” this emotional connection remains complex because he can only imagine his son leaving. As the narrator’s tone grows in anxiety, the amount of lines in each stanza also increases. The last three stanzas express a steady accumulation of fear and rage and then a transition to a decrease in apprehension. The level of sentiment attached to each stanza lengthened them as each line represented a higher level of emotion causing a new level of intensification within each stanza. The last two stanzas increase from four lines back to five lines because the father becomes less anxious and seems to realize that the complex relationship between him and his son is distinguished by emotions of love in a world with insufficiencies. Cumulatively, the father’s

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