Poem Analysis Of 'A Story' By Li-Young Lee

In the poem “A Story”, Li-Young Lee depicts a frustration in a man’s relationship with his son. The poem engenders a complexity and ambivalent nature of parenthood through the “story” of the father’s silence.

The first three stanzas establish Lee’s doubt as a father. On the present, his child “waits in his lap” and asks his father to tell him a bedtime story; however, the father “can’t come ip with one”. He sits, confused and reticent, unsure of what to do. “[Rubbing] his chin”, the father “can recall not one” story that he has heard/told before. His doubt over this trivial matter reveals the insecurities that a parent may feel with their child. The father is afraid the “boy will give up on his father” and will lose the meaningful relationship that he cherishes with his son. Lost in thought, the father panics and does not know what to tell his eagerly waiting son.

Lee underscores the father’s worries in the fourth and fifth stanzas.

Thinking of the future, “the [father] lives far ahead”. He begins to think of the worst possible scenario, imagining “the day [his] boy will go”. Through his arduous process of creating a story, the father begins to believe that his silence, in this situation, will lead to his son “packing his shirts...looking for his keys”, and leaving him. As a parent, Lee highlights the overwhelming through-process of a parent and the scary reality that the parent is responsible for a dependent child. The father cries “Don’t go!” to the boy as he is packing, longing to maintain their emotional connection as father and son. This section of the poem highlights the man’s anxiety. The quick, blunt exclamations indicates the father’s frustration and desperation for his son to

stay.
Suddenly, the poem shifts back to the present in the sixth stanza. The father comes back to reality and reminds himself that “the boy is here”. All this time, the man has been dwelling the future implications of his actions, when the boys only wants to spend quality time with his dad. The father son bond that they had was “earthly rather than heavenly”, left to human action and not Godly fate. One miniscule action was not going to ruin their relationship. Their connection was “emotional rather than logical”; the son didn’t need his father to tell a story, but wanted to connect with his father though the time they spent together, even if it was spent in silence.
“A Story”, by Li-Young Lee, ultimately envelopes the capricious and methodical way that a parent thinks when raising a child. Any action that a mother or father makes could potentially impact their child in the future; however, Lee creates a call to action in his last stanza. Rather than focus on the effects of their actions, Lee emelishes the true message of his poem: asking parents to live in-the-moment with their child to relish their relationship together.