Lucille Clifton Forgiving My Father Summary

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In “Forgiving my father” written by Lucille Clifton, she wrote the poem in first person perspective which in this case the daughter. It become obvious later on the poem when the daughter called her father “daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man”(Clifton 20). The speaker seems to have a hard time trying to forgive her father because of financial stability and the problems her father caused. Clifton was able to asserted the words bills, payday and also due to emphasize money as a metaphor throughout the poem. All of the financial metaphors and images inserted into clifton's poem were in order to see the vivid image of the speakers father. The speaker starts by being harsh on her father on a couple of stanzas. When we look at the first …show more content…

The speakers father was not much involved in the speakers life. In fact he was always outsized in the speakers life bank account. The speakers father might be a huge disappointment to the speaker as a father. This might might be for several reasons. May be the father was abusive to his daughter as well as her mother, maybe he was a person who drink, or maybe her father is a gambler and that result his family to not have food to eat. This caused the speaker pain that she can’t forgive describing him as “debt” a debt that can never be paid of. Lastly the speaker at the end the speaker pointed out one last piece of financial metaphor. She stated that “what am i doing he collecting? You lie side by side in debtor’s boxes and no accounting will open them up” this particular line is significant money metaphor in the poem. In line 3 and 4 the speaker says “ all week you have….. Asking for more time” the speaker emphasizes “like a ghost” specifying the death of her father. She also indicated down in the second stanza her father's death stating that the time has passed to forgive her father. It is significant because it is where the speaker realized it is late to be angry at her father and those debts cannot be collected as her father

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