Through the father’s fear of breaking his relationship between himself and his son because of his lackluster-story-telling ability, the poem “A Story” conveys the strained and complex relationship between a father and his son. The poem use different literary devices to create a vivid picture of the father’s dread of abandonment by his and of the innocence son exudes as he asks for new story via tone and point of view.
The Li-Young Lee manipulates tone throughout the poem to explain why the father’s turmoil and the son’s innocence is important to explain the relationship between the two people. The poem starts an ominous tone as it warns the reader of sorrow if not heeded, and continues on a light-hearted tone with the father and son sitting in a room together with the son stating to the father, “Not the same story, Baba. A new one,” which causes the father anxiety swell into a feverish nightmare as his fear of disappointing his son begins to take over since he does not have a story to recite to the child, giving the poem a dark, obsessive tone, which the poem reveals when the father yells at the son “Are you a god…that I should never disappoint.” Already, the father has let his son down; how many more times can this occur before his nightmare comes to pass, how many more times will the son tolerate the father’s failure before leaving him to his own devices; this is the relationship between the father and son, which is why Lee use opposing tones to show this relationship such as the contrast between the first and second stanza in the poem with the first hosting an ominous tone as it states the following warning: “Sad is the man who is asked for a story and can’t come up with one,” while the second stanza holds a sincere tone as the stanza starts with the following line, “His five-year-old son waits in his lap….” and continues with “…The man rubs his chin, scratches his …show more content…
Point-of-view is a powerful literary device that allows the reader access into a character’s heart and mind, up to the amount given by the author. In the case, Lee gave the reader a perfect view of the mind of the father but leaves to the imagination the inner-most thoughts of the child. Lee does writes the poem this way in order to create a contradiction in the relationship between the father and son. He does this by not switching to the child and revealing either a shocking truth or a picturesque version of the father because of redundancy of thought that would occur. The poem explains that father is years ahead of son in terms of knowledge and years when it says, “Already the man lives far ahead,” while the boy lives only in the present in the few seconds before and after uttering a single line to anyone because “…the boy is here.” This statement divulges why reader is not privy to the mind of the child: the child only knows of the situation at hand and not in the long run, unlike the father who lives years ahead and can already the day when his son leaves him. These two minds contradict as the son holds the father back, while the father is essentially a toy, rather than intellectual role model, to the child, which strains their
The Li-Young Lee manipulates tone throughout the poem to explain why the father’s turmoil and the son’s innocence is important to explain the relationship between the two people. The poem starts an ominous tone as it warns the reader of sorrow if not heeded, and continues on a light-hearted tone with the father and son sitting in a room together with the son stating to the father, “Not the same story, Baba. A new one,” which causes the father anxiety swell into a feverish nightmare as his fear of disappointing his son begins to take over since he does not have a story to recite to the child, giving the poem a dark, obsessive tone, which the poem reveals when the father yells at the son “Are you a god…that I should never disappoint.” Already, the father has let his son down; how many more times can this occur before his nightmare comes to pass, how many more times will the son tolerate the father’s failure before leaving him to his own devices; this is the relationship between the father and son, which is why Lee use opposing tones to show this relationship such as the contrast between the first and second stanza in the poem with the first hosting an ominous tone as it states the following warning: “Sad is the man who is asked for a story and can’t come up with one,” while the second stanza holds a sincere tone as the stanza starts with the following line, “His five-year-old son waits in his lap….” and continues with “…The man rubs his chin, scratches his …show more content…
Point-of-view is a powerful literary device that allows the reader access into a character’s heart and mind, up to the amount given by the author. In the case, Lee gave the reader a perfect view of the mind of the father but leaves to the imagination the inner-most thoughts of the child. Lee does writes the poem this way in order to create a contradiction in the relationship between the father and son. He does this by not switching to the child and revealing either a shocking truth or a picturesque version of the father because of redundancy of thought that would occur. The poem explains that father is years ahead of son in terms of knowledge and years when it says, “Already the man lives far ahead,” while the boy lives only in the present in the few seconds before and after uttering a single line to anyone because “…the boy is here.” This statement divulges why reader is not privy to the mind of the child: the child only knows of the situation at hand and not in the long run, unlike the father who lives years ahead and can already the day when his son leaves him. These two minds contradict as the son holds the father back, while the father is essentially a toy, rather than intellectual role model, to the child, which strains their