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Li-Young Lee's Eating Alone

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Li-Young Lee's Eating Alone
Not many people enjoy eating alone. While it may be more efficient than a meal filled with gossip and conversation, it is substantially less satisfying. Especially when in public, people do not love eating by themselves. Eating alone can be especially sad when you are used to eating with someone you love. On top of that, it can be exceptionally sad if you know you will never have the chance to eat with that person ever again. Li-Young Lee’s Eating Alone is a poem about working through the grief of a lost loved one and coming to terms with your own loneliness.
In this poem, the mention of the feeling “cold” is used as symbolism to show the loneliness that the speaker is feeling. The speaker begin the poem in his garden, pulling up onions. …show more content…
Lee uses vivid imagery of a sunset to show an ending life: “What is left of the day flames / in the maples…” (3-4). Here, Lee is obviously describing a sunset. Sunsets are red, orange, and yellow, which are the same colors seen in flames. He is using this image to symbolize an end, or a death. The end of the day flames in the maples, slowly burning out with beauty and grace. A sunset fading away can be compared to someone’s mind and personality fading away as they age - perhaps the same thing happened to Lee’s father. This is a bittersweet moment, because Lee probably feels deep sorrow and frustration that his father is fading away right before his eyes and nothing can be done to stop it, but he also is still exhibiting parts of his bright …show more content…
The imagery brought forth by the environment described evokes feelings of loneliness and sorrow, and the use of bright colors in the vanishing sunset and cardinal show the fading away of a source of comfort or happiness. The speaker of the poem is lonely because his father has died, most likely too soon, due to an illness. He misses the time he spent with his father, because he was a source of excitement in a dull world, much like the rice and peas brought flavor to the plain white rice. It is a bittersweet poem, the speaker fondly remembers his father, but there is also anger present, either towards the father for abandoning him by dying, or the speaker himself for not cherishing his father while he had the chance, or more likely,
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