Eating Alone Poem Analysis

What is the meaning of love? When we are born into this world, there are already those that love and adore us. One article defines it as “ a variety of different feelings and emotions, chemical brain states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection (“I love my mother”) to pleasure” (Lyons, “A Deeper Look”). “Love” is a unique and complicated neurological emotion which is very difficult to understand. It is just like hunger and thirst, but just more permanent. Many of us talk about love as if we have no control over it, as if it is blind, in the sense that it can’t be helped. Many artists and poets use the heart as a symbol that represents love, even though the truth is that it occurs in our brain. Unlike modern society, the older

It is clear that the theme is loneliness because of all the evidence that supports the idea that the Li-Young feels alone without his father to watch over him. The start of the second stanza states that “once, years back, I walked beside my father among the windfall pears.” (8-9). This line illustrates a photogenic memory of when the speaker and his father walked together along pear trees. There is nothing unique or special about this moment, but it was a moment where the speaker truly felt the closeness he had with him. Li-Young compares his father to a cardinal: "I turn. A cardinal vanishes" (5). He further reminiscences the death of his father. The period that divides the line creates a sharp turn in events for the son. The bird represents fondness and love, and suggests that Li-Young’s father died very unexpectedly. This dramatic change in events showed the son how the love he received by his father disappeared from his life forever. Li-Young cherishes memories like these that are described throughout the poem, even though they are memories that remind him that he is now alone. The speaker makes it clear in the third stanza that he is talking about his father’s death. He sees his dead father wave to him near the trees, and this imagination quickly disappears. The last stanza illustrates a dinner with green peas, rice, and shrimp. Li-Young is drowning in his own pool of loneliness and learns much about himself through eating by himself. Sharing meals with our family is a common practice, and eating alone is seen as ‘socially awkward’. A common assumption that many people make of those who eat alone is that they are unhappy and lonely themselves, and this is definitely the case with Li-Young as he greatly loves and misses his late