Wednesday, March 25, 2009
"The Gift" By Li-Young Lee
One thing i notice about Lee in most of his poetry is his mention of his parents, predominantly his father. This proposes the idea that Lees father may have had a great impact on Lees life. In "The Gift" Lee expresses how much of a significant figure his father has been in his life. Lee has learned so much from his father that paved him into the person he was. For example, when Lee watched his father remove the metal splinter from his hand he had learned from this and appreciated that moment in time, he then transmitted that knowledge to his advantage and used it in his life as show in stanza three when he says "Had you followed that boy you would have arrived here,where I bend over my wife's right hand." This was Lees "gift", the gift of knowledge passed onto him by his father. Lee held a tremendous amount of sentiment over his fathers teachings and kept them with him through out the course of his life.
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Well you basically explained just as i would..He valued his father a lot and his approach to things in life. But he mentions descriptons of how his father holds his hands gently and his fathers voice being the thing that soothed him(not the story). He also mentions death and higher power phrases. He's basically saying that his father is his savior in a great deal of words.
ReplyDeleteIt might be interesting to trace the "figure" of the father through several of Lee's poems: what does this figure represent, symbolically, in the terms of the poems?--i.e., not to be confused with simply a literal description of the father--and how does the father figure here contrast, for eg., with the stereotypical father/authority figure in western culture? I think you'll see, too, as you study different representations of the father in differnt poems, that it becomes a somewhhat complex and amibiguous symbol.
ReplyDeleteFor some ideas about focusing an analysis on this particular poem, from another perspective, see my comment on Desiree's blog.
Do you mean that his father is not the tough, strick, disciplinary, typical stereotyped father? Here he is more soft and sensitive and takes/gives off a sort of mother-like action to not worry his son?
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis
ReplyDeletereally makes sense :)
Thank you!