Analysis Of Why I Left The Church By Richard Garcia

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

scheme and presented as a narration. There are places in the poem where it makes it clear the story is being told later on, as in line 8 where it is written “Even / twenty-five years later….” (6, 7) but much of the story is told in the present tense. This fluctuation of tenses makes readers feel as if we are getting the story from a young boy even though our common sense tells us that this is not the case. This format of the poem could possibly suggest that the changing of tenses represents the uncertainty that the child feels with religion and his imagination. The poet could have done this on purpose because he could possibly still be battling with belief in the Church and convey the uncertainty naturally.
The poet does a superb job to convey the imagination of the church by the child with effective figurative language like imagery.

“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

own.
During the poet’s reminiscence of why he left church, the reader is introduced to the boy’s space helmet that he wears to service.

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

Church.
During the boy’s fantastical trip in space, the audience is presented with more imagery and other figurative language. “Cold on one side and hot / on the other” (40, 41) “in the blackness / and brightness of space.” (38, 39). This superbly describes the boy’s uncertainty with the use of oppositely related images like hot and cold. “I remember thinking, / Maybe I will come back / when I’m ready. / But I won’t tell / the other children / what it was like. / I’ll have to make something up.” (45-51). these last few lines of the poem may suggest the boy’s skepticism about religion, and that it is comprised somewhat of fiction and interpretation. The poet leaves the church through the power of his imagination to explore beyond what he has been conditioned to think.
Overall, Garcia does an effective job in conveying the images and conflicts he experienced as a child. Garcia did a great job of bridging the gap that one sees between Church and childhood fantasy, without showing disrespect to religion itself.