The Gift

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Consonance

Consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds in words. Lee uses this to great effect in the opening stanza of “The Gift”:

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from (Lines 1-5).

The melodious quality of the nine “l” and seven “m” sounds in these five lines lulls the reader into the same sense of serenity that the speaker experienced as a young boy with his father.

Among the other instances of consonance, the concluding lines stand out for the way they bring the poem full circle, sonically:

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,

Death visited here!

I did what a child does

when he’s given something to keep.

I kissed my father (Lines 31-35).

The six “d” and four “c/r” sounds give the lines an emphatic, deliberate emphasis that signals that the poem is coming to a close. The same goes for the three “r” sounds, each of which ends a line (Lines 31, 32, and 35). The final “r” provides the strong emphasis we associate, whether consciously or not, with the decisive ending of a poem.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole means exaggeration, and no one exaggerates like an injured child. Looking back on himself as a child, Lee laughs at the hyperbolic catastrophizing that he could have engaged in after getting an “iron sliver I thought I’d die from” (Line 5). His father prevents him from his typical reactions:

I did not hold that shard

between my fingers and think,

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin,

Ore Going Deep for My Heart.

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,

Death visited here! (Lines 26-32)

Lee demonstrates the child’s penchant for exaggeration to contrast his humorous in retrospect dramatics with the serenity his father’s manner instilled. The hyperbole also possibly hints at his wife’s internal state, which the poem does not explicitly describe: As Lee explained to Bill Moyers, she was “sobbing” (35) when Lee found her in the bathroom. In the poem, the highly competent, gifted Lee can “shave her thumbnail down / so carefully she feels no pain” (Lines 21-22). “The Gift” that father has granted to son allows their loved ones respite from such hyperbole.

Free verse

Free verse poems are those without regular rhyme or meter. While many lines of “The Gift” rely on an iambic pattern where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one, Lee does not exclusive use this meter. Similarly, he varies line lengths: While the first stanza contains long lines of at least ten syllables, the second stanza, by contrast, consists of much shorter lines. These shorter lines, with more regular line breaks, slow down the poem, in keeping with the father’s careful, deliberate actions and the adult Lee’s precise descriptions of his father.

Lee’s variable free verse style allows him to highlight the words ending each line. The lines of the second stanza, for instance, end on many words that are central to understanding the poem: “tale” (Line 6), “well” (Line 7), “prayer” (Line 8), “hands” (Line 9), “tenderness” (Line 10), “face” (Line 11), “discipline” (Line 12), and “head” (Line 13). These words could almost serve as shorthand for the poem as a whole.

Varying line lengths at the end of the poem work with the consonance to create a slow, meditative pace. The deliberate pacing of the concluding lines instructs readers to pay close attention, as Lee did to his father and his father’s lesson.