Ironing Their Clothes, By Julia Alvarez

In the poem, Ironing Their Clothes by Julia Alvarez, the speaker is portrayed as a young child who expresses unreciprocated love towards the family through ironing their clothes. Despite her effort, the family members do not respond with the same amount of love from them and often her affections are ignored. Alvarez initially develops the speaker’s action of showing love towards her family members through asserting cheerful metonymy and imagery associated with the speaker’s meticulous ironing of family’s clothing. However, by providing explicit statements that describe the family member’s harsh and empty response and forms that do not exhibit detailed descriptions of how did the members reacted to the speaker’s kindness concludes that speaker’s …show more content…
The speaker currently desires to support her father by ironing his shirts. She has ironed it with manners and she “have made a boy out of that tired old man” (Alvarez.) In the poem, the tired man is her father and the boy represents her father wearing the ironed out shirt. Through the metonymy, the speaker believes that her ironing has improved her father’s fatigue and since she is trying to improve her father’s situation, she is expressing her care towards him which implies that she is being affectionate. The speaker also shows the similar trait to her mother by claiming “she could lay (her) dreaming iron on her lap”(Alvarez.) The speaker also irons out her mother’s clothes and “linger over her wrinkled bedsheet” (Alvarez.) Her mother is currently in a situation where she could not be happy towards her daughter because the speaker associates her with “wrinkled bedsheet.” Through ironing, the speaker desires to improve her mother’s unfriendly attitude which ultimately concludes that the speaker is currently sending unreciprocated love to …show more content…
The speaker “stroked the yoke and breast pocket, collar and cuffs,” of her father’s clothing “until the rumpled heap relaxed into the shape” (Alvarez.) The imagery contains numerous parts of the speaker’s father’s shirt because she is examining them carefully and trying to iron it with perfection. The meticulousness of the ironing process implies that she is asserting affection to her father. Furthermore, the speaker irons out her mother’s clothing too. As she irons them out, she “caressed collars, scallops, ties, pleats which made her outfits text of the patience of my(her) passion” (Alvarez.) Alvarez uses a similar method of describing the ironing process as she did with the speaker’s father’s clothing. By specifying each individual parts of the clothing, the ironing process becomes meticulous which comes to imply the speaker’s joyful tone about showing