Analysis Of Knocking By Daniel Beaty

“Knock, Knock” by Daniel Beaty is a creative spoken word poem that focuses on how young people can use their adversities to better themselves and the world around them. Beaty establishes a motif early in the poem, but transforms it as he moves through each section of the poem. The motif transforms as the poem transforms from a young boy learning how to deal with adversity and using it as fuel to create change in the world. Through figurative language and an effective transformative motif, Beaty is able to get his audience to recognize how self confidence has the power to make a difference in the world. Beaty begins his poem by describing a positive memory of his dad and himself when he was a child. The memory is of a game he and his father
Towards the beginning of the section Beaty states, “Knock Knock Until that day when the knock never came”(10). By saying this Beaty is establishing the absence of his father. When mentioning the detail of a room full of brown faces, Beaty is implying that there is a high amount of colored people in jail and prison. Judging from that detail, the window serves as a metaphor that represents both the barrier between him and his father, as well as the social barriers that exist throughout society. As he moves on later in the section he says, “I knock knock trying to break through the glass, trying to get to my father”(21-22). Here, Beaty is showing the amount of confusion he went through of how and why his father was then absent from his life. Later in the section Beaty also goes on to say, “I knock knock as my mama pulls me away before my papa even says a word. And for years he has never said a word”(23-24). Beaty is now describing the ongoing disappointment that he dealt with through his childhood because of his father’s actions. Even with the absence of his father, Beaty had to find a way to grow up without