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Recommended: Literary analysis of a father's story

Scott Hightower’s poem “Father” could be very confusing to interpret. Throughout almost the entirety of the poem the speaker tries to define who his father is by comparing him to various things. As the poem begins the reader is provided with the information that the father “was” all of these things this things that he is being compared to. The constant use of the word “was” gets the reader to think ‘how come the speaker’s father is no longer comparable to these things?’ After the speaker reveals that his father is no longer around, he describes how his father impacted him. Details about the father as well as descriptions of the impacts the father has distraught on the speaker are all presented in metaphors. The repetitive pattern concerning the speaker’s father and the constant use of metaphors gives the reader a sense that the speaker possesses an obsessive trait. As the reader tries to interpret the seemingly endless amount of metaphors, sets of connotative image banks begin to develop in the reader’s mind. Major concepts that are expressed throughout the poem are ideas about what the speaker’s father was like, what he meant to the speaker, and how he influenced the speaker. In the beginning stanza the speaker uses various metaphors to compare the father to a “cowboy,” a “sugar man,” and a “teamster.” These series of images create an image cluster word bank that relate to an older world. The professions of being a cowboy or a being sugar man have no use in modern societies today and “a teamster” is an outdated way to compliment someone. Also in common, all of the metaphors in the first paragraph compare the speaker’s father to people who benefit their environment and people that are generally favored by their community. The fo... ... middle of paper ... ...his father, he has “no use for similes” with a follow up sentence that states that because of his father the speaker now hungers for his “own catalog of metaphors.” These statements signify more than the speaker’s style of writing, they signify the speaker’s opinion about who his father was. By not using similes the speaker avoids directly comparing his father to a variety of specific things because the speaker believed his father was unique, one of a kind like Christ or like a Siberian tiger. Instead, the speaker uses a series of metaphors to suggest a resemblance between his father and a variety of things. Due to the knowledge that the speaker is obsessed with his father, the reader can assume that the reason the speaker didn’t directly compare anything to his father is because his father is suggested to be a unique, influential, and aiding guide to the speaker.

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