Lisa Parker's 'Snapping Beans'

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In the poem “Snapping Beans” by Lisa Parker, the grandmother’s world is contrastingly different from her granddaughter’s college experiences. The poem starts with the image of the grandmother and her college granddaughter, the narrator, sitting on a porch swing snapping beans together with a silver bowl between them. The granddaughter is home for the weekend, as line 5 states “…from school, from the North,..(Meyer pg. 324)”. The phrase from the North implies that she is from the south. The setting of snapping beans on a porch displays a southern country charm with line 7 and 8 stating, “the sun rose, pushing its pink spikes through the slant of cornstalks (Myer pg. 324)”. Whereas, the northern stereotype setting is considered more modernized and …show more content…

The reader can visualize the opposing settings. The grandmother’s character is revealed in line 6 by the humming, “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” combined with the setting implies that the grandmother is a religious person that appreciates the calm country life. When the grandmother stops humming the granddaughter states in line 12 -15, “I could feel the soft gray of her stare against the side of my face when she asked, How’s school a-goin?”. The granddaughter, narrator, starts revealing her inner thoughts to the reader. There is a close relationship between the grandmother and the granddaughter as evident in line 20, “She reached the leather of her hand over the bowl and cupped my quivering chin…(Meyer pg. 324) The caring touch reveals the grandmother’s concern for her granddaughter’s well being, even the lyric of her humming suggests that Jesus will listen to ones deepest worries and fears. The granddaughter’s life lessons learned at the northern college are referenced in Line 19 as very strong like “..a swig of strychnine (Meyer pg. 324)”. In line 31, her “…friends wore noserings and wrote poetry about sex, about alcoholism, about Buddha (Meyer

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