The Gift By Li Young Lee Analysis

The Gift by Li-Young Lee is a fascinating poem about the particular, indescribable relationship between a boy and his father. In the poem, Lee reflects on his past, detailing one precise moment in time when he received the most fearsome of splinters. It was at this time when Lee´s father sat the boy down, and recited for him a story, so as to calm him and clear his mind of any worry. As Lee recounts, the voice of his father that night remains embedded in his mind and he recalls his father´s hands as, ¨...two measurements of tenderness he laid against my face, the flames of discipline he raised above my head.¨ It is clear from this that Lee's father was kind and gentle to the boy that night, as Lee adjacently describes how his father carefully removed the splinter from Lee´s hand,
Though only seven years old when the young child acquired the splinter, Lee remembers the effectiveness his father´s story had on him. Instead of a scared little boy that night, Lee was calm as he watched his father´s, ¨...lovely face and not the blade.” Unquestionably, Lee´s objective in writing this story was to aware the world of the definition of a gift; Lee received a gift the night he lodged a silver shard into his hand. When Lee´s father removed the splinter and handed it to Lee, it was a gift. Though it was not wrapped in paper, the fragment of iron which had emerged from Lee´s palm was a gift, because it represented not only the patience and affection that Lee's father had for him but the strong bond between the two that Lee discovered that night, and as Lee so flawlessly puts to words, ¨...and I did not hold that shard between my fingers and think, Metal will bury me, christen it Little Assassin, Ore Going Deep for my