Relationships in Li-Young Lee's "The Gift"

Written under test conditions in class, IB SL English Literature (unseen poem)

‘The Gift’ is a poem that relates an old memory of the narrator when he was very young about how his father removed a splinter from his hand.

To avoid causing him undue pain and to distract him, his father told him a story, ‘in a low voice’. This makes it seem comforting, and creates the picture of a kind, benevolent figure in this father-son relationship. The narrator ‘watched his lovely face and not the blade’ – the adjective ‘’lovely’ seems sort of childlike, and in conjunction with the rest of the stanza, creates vivid imagery of a small boy and his comforting father. The assonance of ‘face’ and ‘blade’ works to show how there is a seamless transition of the small boy’s focus, that his father’s story and low voice enraptured him so as to take his attention from the ‘blade’; the blade, of course, is a hyperbolic metaphor – he is referring here to the splinter. Thus his father, to him, not only spares him the pain and discomfort of a splinter but saved him, from the ‘iron shiver [he] thought [he]’d die from.’ This is a relationship that was clearly very formative for the boy and throughout the poem, he seeks to emulate his father’s soothing and loving presence.

In the next stanza, the narrator asserts that he ‘can’t remember the tale, // but hear his voice still, a well // of dark water, a prayer’. The fact that he can’t remember the story is telling – possibly upon hearing it he didn’t even understand it: the salient point is therefore very clearly the boy’s father holistically, his presence, not just some story. The adjective ‘still’ is here a homonym: though he means that his father’s voice persists in his memory though the story has faded (again emphasising the importance of the father-son relationship rather than any one abstruse detail thereof); but it also refers to a ‘well of dark water’ – it is still, because this hints at yet another attribute of his father, that he is calm even as the boy thought he’d die. He is represented by dark water because of the depth of his character, his caring, his kindness. He is a well in the middle of nowhere; he sustains, and gives life.

The narrator goes on to ‘recall his hands’. Here he shifts from the auditory sense to the visual, and to feeling. He uses synecdoche to refer to them as ‘two measures of tenderness’, vaguely reminiscent of a recipe, like he is trying to recall the ingredients of his relationship with his father, such that he can recreate it algorithmically. Therefore we see again just how much he values his relationship with his father. The imagery in the next line as his father ‘laid [his hands] against my face’, is tender to the reader still, evoking a scene of care, not now in opposition to the threat of a splinter, but just in their relationship. It is juxtaposed, however, in the next line, and the metaphor changes from ‘measures of tenderness’ to ‘flames of discipline’. That he refers to his hands as flames is interesting because of their simultaneous harsh and kindly connotations. The warmth of a flame can be of great comfort; and yet being licked by a flame burns, and is immensely painful. Thus succeeds the narrator’s extended metaphor, as he recalls the pain brought upon him by his father when he was punished – ‘the flames of discipline’. Clearly however, he does not resent his father for this, but seems instead to value the discipline his father showed to him, so long as it is this flame that visits great joy upon him too. Therefore we can see that relationships are not just an interchange of emotional positivity, but must carry with them the discipline that the boy’s father showed him; that it is important in relationships to show the other when they are going wrong and to discourage this for love – particularly salient of course in the relationship here between a father and his son.

He briefly elaborates upon his recollection in the next stanza, from the perspective of a third-party, and we now re-experience the scene viewing it from a distance. He asserts, with spectacularly vivid imagery, that to an onlooker, it would seem not that the boy and father were interlocked in struggle against the malevolent splinter, but that the father was ‘planting something in the boy’s palm’, giving him a gift (as per the title of the poem), so tender and gentle was the father.

With a hint of anaphora, a parallel construction to the start of the stanza (‘had you entered’ to ‘had you followed’), we are again shown some imagery. Now we see the small child being given a gift – freedom from strife, briefly? – by his father, and we are told to follow him. Down the vista of his memories, the great landscape that is the journey of boy progressing to man, we are told we ‘would have arrived here’, to a point in the present, to the point that triggered the recollection that has been this poem, as he is now ‘[bent] over [his] wife’s right hand’. Just as the transition was initiated with a parallel construction, so too now do we see the parallel scene: the boy and his father have transitioned seamlessly to a man – our narrator – and his wife. We see them in the same position, but the narrator is reversed – he is now his father, or he is trying to be, to tenderly remove a splinter from the right hand of his wife. He attempts to pass on the gift of kindness that he himself received from his father, all those years ago. In this way we are shown the importance of relationships. Rather than viewing the relationship of the boy and his father in isolation, we moved to a new point in his life, to show the cumulative effect.  The long-lasting nature of the relationship, even when the father is likely gone, as the boy – now man – remembers his father and the great positive utility he has now provided, indirectly to his wife as his memory is called upon to help see him through this.

The final stanza is the longest: it recounts in the present moment how he removes his wife’s splinter, ‘so carefully she feels no pain’. This is a very sweet moment, showing us in the brief linger in the present the strength of the narrator’s relationship with his wife, helped by means of all those lessons – those gifts – he learned from his father: gentleness, and kindness, and tenderness; and discipline.

‘Watch as I lift the splinter out. This is one of the vanishingly few lines in the poem that is unenjambed – an idea wholly unto its own line. We can imagine a man saying this to his wife, and the dad saying it to his son. Therefore we are back down memory lane having come full circle.

We learn more now, of the memory that we started this poem viewing more abstractly. The boy was seven, confirming the formative nature of his relationship with this father. It also makes more concrete the imagery from the first and second stanza. We now delve into the feelings of the boy, not as his father removed the splinter, but after, when he has been saved from the iron sliver. Before this though we are told what he did not think – that is, he did not think of it existentially. The metaphors used before – ‘the blade’, ‘the iron sliver I thought I’d die from’ – these were existential, but no longer. There is an increasingly sardonic tricolon of these ponderings: ‘metal that will bury me’; ‘Little Assassin’; Ore Going Deep for My Heart’ – the latter two in the form of a title. Instead, he reacted like he has been given a gift, as it appeared to us the onlooker in the third stanza – ‘something to keep. And so he ‘did what a child does // when he’s given something to keep’. The poem ends in the past, and the final line is the other that is not enjambed. It is a simple sentence, short and assertive: ‘I kissed my father’.

And so this last stanza, along with the rest of the poem in aggregate, tells us about the  beauty of relationships, and predominantly though not exclusively of father-son relationships. The extended metaphor of the title ‘The Gift’ persisted throughout. ‘The Gift’ is many things: it is the many attributes that the father gave to his son, the relationship we see the son later emulating with his wife; it is the many attributes that the father possessed and taught his son the value of, his gentles, kindness, discipline, and all the rest’; and it is the splinter that both father and son came to remove, a representation of the things from which co-partners in a relationship save the other from. It is a concrete thing, a splinter, and yet abstracted away, the sum total of these things is what truly matters, and long after we are gone, the effect of our relationship with others continues to persist and provide utility to those we may never even meet. So we are encouraged to bring to relationships all these aforementioned attributes and more, to enable them to flourish, so as to see that they are truly meaningful.

This is how relationships are presented and explored in ‘The Gift’.

Result

Mark: 19/20

Feedback:

· Criterion A: Understanding and interpretation

o 5/5 – The response demonstrates a thorough and perceptive understanding of the literal meaning of the text. There is a convincing and insightful interpretation of the larger implications and subtleties of the text. References to the text are well chosen and effectively support the candidate’s ideas.

o Fabulous understanding of the literal meaning of the text and perceptive interpretations of the wider implications and subtleties. Well done.

· Criterion B: Analysis and evaluation

o 5/5 – The response demonstrates an insightful and convincing analysis of textual features and/or authorial choices. There is very good evaluation of how such features and/or choices shape meaning.

o Super analysis of language and structure. Perhaps further analysis of the metaphors e.g., ‘silver tear’ and ‘tiny flame’ could have enhanced this further.

· Criterion C: Focus and organisation

o 5/5 – The presentation is effectively organised and coherent. The analysis is well focused.

o You build a convincing argument.

· Criterion D: Language

o 4/5 – Language is clear and carefully chosen, with a good degree of accuracy in grammar, vocabulary, and sentence construction; register and style are consistently appropriate to the task.

o Make sure that your writing is legible and that key words are clear. Super use of technical vocabulary.