Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye

Analysis of "Making A Fist"

Nye uses images to convey the message that one must confidently live life to the fullest. For instance, in lines 4-6, Nye writes, "I was seven, I lay in the car/ watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass." Nye uses these images to allow the reader to visualize the captivating imagery of "palm trees" that "swirl a sickening pattern past the glass." One imagines the speaker on a road trip in a "car" and shares the image of getting sick as she watches her old life pass by and the beginning of new one. Although the speaker is motionless to the changes in life, she uses that moment as a learning experience and lives life to its fullest potential. Alongside images, Nye also uses a flashback to childhood when she writes, "I was seven" and demonstrates the message of how the speakers gains more confident as life goes on and learns to live it to the fullest. Furthermore, Nye uses the visual image of how "palm trees swirl a sickening pattern" as an example of the message, that one must confidently live life to the fullest. As another example of powerful imagery, in lines 15-17, where Nye writes, "I who did not die, who am still living,/ still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,/ clenching and opening one small hand." The visual image of her "clenching and opening one small hand" communicates that the speakers has to learn by experience and living life to the fullest. Although the speaker still has many "questions" about life, she knows she is alive and must live life to the fullest because she is "clenching and opening" her "hand." She recalls, "still lying in the backseat," to emphasize that learning experiences happen as life goes on. It is also apparent that the author wrote the poem with a rebellious tone that due to using the image of making a "fist," along with the poem being written in free verse and with no rhyme scheme. Furthermore, Nye uses images to exemplify how one must live life to the fullest.