Forgiving my Father by Lucille Clifton
Forgiving my father by Lucille Clifton New criticism emphasizes in a close examination of a text with minimum consideration or none for the biographical or historical circumstances in which it was produced. Doing a new criticism work we have to have in mind the tensions, ironies, paradoxes, oppositions, and the ambiguities that could be found in the poem. In the first stanza I can see the ambiguity in the word paying. This could mean to pay a bill or to pay some one a debt of money that is owed. Lucille Clifton really means here that there is a daughter in her father's grave grieving because she wants to forgive her father for the bad treatment she and her mother received from him. In the second stanza the irony is seen by the way she talks to her father, for example, "there is no more time for you. There will never be time enough daddy, daddy, old leche
"Not mine" she does not hold bad feeling against her mother. " Here I can understand why her anger goes so far. I can picture her at the grave expressing her feeling and emotions out loud like if her father could hear her. She talks about forgiveness when she doesn't forgive. I think is because she was sexually abused by her father since she calls him "old lecher". " The tone in this stanza changes to express anger, irony and hatred. In this stanza Clifton gives a very good description of the father, a person with no feelings cruel and mean man, for example "you gave her all you had which was nothing. The paradox of forgiving and not forgiving is shown in the way she tells her father "I wish you were rich so I could take it all and give the lady what she was due. In my opinion she does this to feel better and to let out all the anger buried inside her. To conclude the title Forgiving my Father is nothing more than the central idea of the poem, which is the haunted memories of mistreatments and abuses of her father towards her. In the last stanza she refers to her mother and to her father by saying "you were each other's bad bargain, not mine. Why so much anger irony and hatred towards her father. The title is an opposition of forgiveness since she will not pardon him.
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