Analysis Of Why I Left The Church By Richard Garcia

773 Words2 Pages

Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the ongoing and conflicting relationship between a child’s fantasy and the Church. Although the majority of the text is told in present tense, readers are put through the lenses of a young boy who contemplates the legitimacy of the restricting and constricting nature of worship. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church. The poet presents the issue of childhood innocence and preset mindsets created by the Church using strong metaphors and imagery that appeal to all the senses. The poem is written in free verse with no rhyme …show more content…

“Maybe it was / because the only time / I hit a baseball / it smashed the neon cross / on the church across / the street” (1-6). The readers are clearly presented with a scene of a boy playing baseball and accidentally breaking a church cross. The boy then explores and toys with the possible divine consequences for accidentally breaking a cross with a baseball. “Maybe it was the demon-stoked / rotisseries of purgatory / where we would roast / hundreds of years / for the smallest of sins” (11-15). Here the poet effectively uses imagery to show the reader how a child’s imagination may perceive hell. This may also show the impressionability of the Church on a freethinking child and how the combination can be profound on a young boy with internal conflicts. This can also apply to children’s fantasies and their carefree attitudes which allows them to blend what mindsets they were forced into with that of their …show more content…

The following lines also give us a better look into the boy’s imaginative possibilities. “I wore my space helmet / to catechism?” (17, 18). “Sister Mary Bernadette / pointed towards the door / and said, “Out! Come back / when you’re ready.”(21-24) and from this point it is a fantastical retelling of the boy floating up through the roof of the church and escaping the church. Perhaps he left the church because he wasn’t allowed to wear his space helmet. And that might be his reasoning. But it was all a grand metaphor with the space helmet being his imagination and spirit and the Church not being the best place for him to express that. The poet again explores the conflict between an innocent free-thinking childhood and the restriction of

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Angela Garcia's The Pastoral Clinic

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    Angela Garcia’s The Pastoral Clinic is a riveting collection of illness narratives depicting the lives of heroin addicts, specifically in the underserved area of Espanola Valley, New Mexico. She genuinely provides her audience the reality behind a marginalized population that suffers from an addiction crisis as well as the presence of institutional structures that criminalize addicts for their illness. This paper will focus on care and chronicity as two central ideas of Garcia’s work from two lenses of understanding. The first lens is the Foucauldian approach to bio-power and bio-bureaucracies, a mode of analysis that the author utilizes quite sufficiently to support her argument of “restoring the embodied, economic and moral dynamics of addiction” (Garcia 2010, 10 ). This approach illustrates care as a product of chronicity and vice versa. The second lens is Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and resistance, a mode of analysis

    Read More

  • A Father's Phaethon: The Legend Of The Father

    1407 Words  | 3 Pages

    When the poem is read aloud, the explicit rhyme and rhythm of the lines becomes extremely obvious. In fact, the bouncy rhythm is so uplifting, it occasionally makes the audiences feel like it is too predictable and straight-forward. An example would be “bright with chrysolite”, the word “chrysolite” feels like it is forcefully implemented for the sake of the rhyme. This is somewhat similar to a children’s tale. Most children’s tale as we know it, conveys messages straightforwardly and are easily understood by children, it also has an amiable tone and a merry mood that engages the children 's attention. Similarly, the rhyme and rhythm of this poem is very obvious and explicit, creating a delightful, casual mood that appeals to a young audience. Even though the legend dealt with deep insights about parenting that are intricate and puzzling, the father delivered it in such a gratifying, simple manner that made even the most dark and dreadful matters: like the description of precarious beasts and vicious monsters to sound like a blissful adventure of friendly animals. The sole purpose of this contradiction between the tone and message is to make this seemingly strong and serious topic more tolerable and captivating to the son of the father. Unsensible, impulsive youth is very similar to restless children, a long insipid lecture about deep insights is very difficult for them to buy into. In the same time, a harsh, threatening warning will only make them obey unwillingly, and creating a doubtful relationship will make them uncomfortable to communicate or appeal to their parents. Clearly, the percipient father recognized the ineffectiveness of these unsuitable parenting methods. Instead, he conveyed the message in a uncomplicated, friendly way that made his son to accept his teachings more comfortably. A

    Read More

  • Young Goodman Brown

    989 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Young Goodman Brown” is short story about a young Puritan man who sets out on a journey through the forest to witness a witch ceremony, leaving his wife, Faith. He must resist the devil’s temptation and return to her at sunrise, as promised. On his journey Brown experiences events that alter his way of thinking forever. This story is centered around the concept of Faith. Faith is used to show the extent to which religion can become the driving force in one’s life. Faith is defined as an “unquestionable belief in and loyalty to God” (Guralmick 502). Faith can control one’s behavior and manipulate one’s mind in the same way that one’s extreme face or pride can. Goodman let his excessive pride in himself destroy his relationship with his wife and community, and his ability to worship God.

    Read More

  • Summary: The Sign In My Father's Hands By Martin Espada

    736 Words  | 2 Pages

    This shows how the little boy looks at his father in complete awe and thinks that he can do no wrong. Christ is God-like too many people and the boy puts his father on the same level as Christ. The Brewery cops could only “watch in drunken disappointment,” could be viewed as all of the Christians who watched as Jesus was freed from the struggle which is known as life on Earth. The last line of the poem, “I searched my father’s hands / for a sign of the miracle” indicates that he looked for the wounds that Jesus was said to have had on his hands from being nailed to the cross. This connects to the theme of racism because the hole in the father's hands would have been the only thing that directly connected him to Christ. Which would have explained why the father was able to tolerate the unjust cruelty that he faced every day due to being a victim of racism because it is said that Jesus was able to get through any and every hardship thrown his way. In the second stanza, the narrator says, “in 1964, I had never tasted beer, / and no one told me about the picket signs.” This can be seen as

    Read More

  • Gwen Harwood: Changing Of The Self

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the poem The Glass Jar we witness the heart-wrenching episode in a little boy’s life, where he is made to discover a distressing reality. Putting his faith first in a monstrance and then in his own mother, he finds himself being betrayed by both. With the many allusions to nature (for example the personification of the sun and references to animals and woods and so on) Gwen Harwood constructs a dynamic backdrop which allow the responder to dwell on the subtle shifts in the child’s personality. The setting is the terrain of nightmares and dreams, where conscious will is suppressed and the reigns are handed to the subconscious mind.

    Read More

  • Richard Wilbur A Fire Truck

    576 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author is able to so descriptively express this common event by dedicating each stanza to a different perspective involved. The author begins the poem with a protruding inexplicit situation, captivating the reader’s interest and provoking curiosity to help create imagery. Much like a thesis of an essay, the author states “blurring to sheer verb” at the end of the first stanza, he restates the true simple nature of this topic. Wilbur next describes the surrounding in reaction to the fire truck, showing the reader the flamboyancy and power of the fire truck. At the end of the second stanza, the author italicizes the line “thought is degraded action!” This could be interpreted as the speaker’s thoughts, suggesting that those ringing bells remind him that thinking is but the inferior form of action. In the third stanza, the author focuses on the effects of the fire truck on the speaker, helping relate the reader to the thoughts of the speaker as he experiences this event. Corresponding to the ending of the second stanza, the speaker is reminded of the true nature of thoughts, thus letting go of his worries “I stand here purged of nuance and my mind a blank. All I was brooding upon has taken wing.”

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Love Poem To Los Angeles By Luis Rodriguez

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    For example, the people in Santa Ana and the surroundings around her . Also, about her losing many people . One of the symbols is the poet uses is “ Schoolyard boys “ . The symbols represents the young men that have died in the early days . Evidence in the poem that suggests this meaning is found in stanza #2 which says “ The schoolyard boys underneath the ground “ . This means that the schoolyard boys died .The author has a upset feeling about it . As a symbol this represents something negative about the city . For example death and gangs in the city

    Read More

  • Language And Diction In Barbie Doll, By Marge Piercy

    1096 Words  | 3 Pages

    The speaker reflects on the teenage girl’s childhood as she recalls the girl played with “dolls that did pee-pee” (2). This childish description allows the speaker to explain the innocence of the little girl. As a result, the reader immediately feels connected to this cute and innocent young girl. However, the speaker’s diction evolves as the girl grew into a teenager as she proclaims: “She was healthy, tested intelligent, / possessed strong arms and back, / abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” (7-9). The speaker applies polished language to illustrate the teen. This causes the reader not only to see the girl as an adult, but also to begin to grasp the importance of her situation. The speaker expresses what the bullies told this girl as she explains: “She was advised to play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty” (12-13). The sophisticated diction shifts towards the girl’s oppressors and their cruel demands of her. Because of this, the reader is aware of the extent of the girl’s abuse. The speaker utilizes an intriguing simile as she announces: “Her good nature wore out / like a fan belt” (15-16). The maturity of the speaker’s word choice becomes evident as she uses a simile a young reader would not understand. This keeps the mature reader focused and allows him to fully understand the somberness of this poem. The speaker concludes the poem as she depicts the teenage girl’s appearance at her funeral: “In the casket displayed on satin she lay / with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on” (19-20). The speaker elects not to describe the dead girl in an unclear and ingenuous manner. Rather, she is very clear and

    Read More

  • Myth, Religion, and Violence in Pan’s Labyrinth and Bless Me, Ultima: A Comparative Analysis

    1354 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rudolfo Anaya’s, Bless Me, Ultima and Guillermo del Toro’s, Pan’s Labyrinth are two coming-of-age stories. Both the novel and the movie are full of events that contribute to the disillusionment of the main character’s childhood idealism and the realization of the real world they live in. Both protagonists absorb themselves in a mythical world full of fantasy and each receives exposure to religious theology and trauma by the violence of men. Despite the fact that Antonio and Ofelia have different familial role models and travel along different paths, their childlike innocence, disillusionment, and initiation into adulthood comes about through similar themes: myth, religion, and violence.

    Read More

  • Religious Revelation in Carver’s Cathedral

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    The structural and technical features of the story point towards a religious epiphany. The title of the story, as well as its eventual subject, that of cathedrals, points inevitably towards divinity. Upon first approaching the story, without reading the first word of the first paragraph, one is already forced into thinking about a religious image. In addition, four of the story’s eleven pages (that amounts to one third of the tale) surround the subject of cathedrals.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of God Grew Tired Of Us By John Bul Dau

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    Not only is it ridiculously hot year round, but Africa has vast wildlife. One great example is an occurrence where John and thousands of refugees were trapped on the banks of the Gilo River. They had Ethiopian soldiers on one side and a crocodile filled river on the other. As John started to hear grenades being launched, he saw many soldiers and vehicles. He had no choice but to jump into the river, face the vicious crocodiles, and “attempt” to swim ten minutes without having the physical skills to do so.

    Read More

  • Gothic Elements In Matthew Lewis's The Monk

    2182 Words  | 5 Pages

    From deals with the devil, corrupt churches, and the decaying body of a lifeless baby, Matthew Lewis’s The Monk is the paradigm of the gothic novel. The main setting of the novel is the church, a place of barbaric and inhumane practices. Deep in the dungeons are prison cells for deviating nuns who are starved and tormented by the head nuns. The Monk, title role of the novel, belongs to the main character who is perhaps the most malevolent and cruel.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of My Dear Fellow Clergyman

    1268 Words  | 3 Pages

    Martin Luther King Jr begins his essay with “My Dear Fellow Clergyman” in an attempt to form a sense of parity between himself and the men being addressed. More ever, he says that he believes that these criticisms are “sincerely set forth” and the men are “of genuine good”. Through this, he applies a Rogerian tactic, where the writer attempts to find a common ground as an alternative to further dividing the sides. His demonstration of equality due to the inter-connectedness of all people is a central idea of the entire letter. He notes that his “secretaries” can’t answer the amount of tedious “criticisms that cross [his] desk” since “constructive work” requires superior attention. In the informational second paragraph, King, “the president

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes and Religion

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    In doing this, the usher of the church on “Fifth Avenue,” abandoned someone less fortunate in order to maintain a good appearance. This “house of God,” which should be opening its doors to give a he lping hand, turns away a man in need of help. Hughes shows betrayal in the same poem, when the less fortunate man asks St. Peter if he can stay. St. Peter replies, “You ca...

    Read More

  • Descriptive Essay - The Evangelic Church

    425 Words  | 1 Pages

    When I was a child I used to be frightened of entering such a place for it seemed so imposing and somewhat dangerous, especially when music was being played. One day, in order to keep a promise I had made, I saw myself forced to enter. It took me quite a while to get the courage to pass through the old oak door, but the moment I stepped in, I realized just how enchanting and breathtaking this building could be. Its fantastic architecture and exquisite frescoes reflect perfectly the unity between this earth and the unseen kingdom of angels in such a manner that one cannot say where one ends and the other begins. The way in which the church was built is also the vivid testimony of a medieval period. Although it is a place that can sometimes be cold and ask for respect it is where prayers are answered and magic is done. An overwhelming feeling of inner harmony takes over you once you enter and God seems much closer. Darkness and light are welded perfectly together creating Redemption’s house. The tower allows you to see the entire town from the smallest river to the biggest building site, offering you its mightiness.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Why I Left The Church By Richard Garcia

Open Document