Sign For My Father Who Stressed The Bunt Poem Analysis
Sometimes it can be difficult for sons to understand the lessons that fathers teach to them, leading to a disconnect between the two. This is the case for the son and his father in David Bottoms’ “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt.” As a child, the speaker lacks appreciation for his father, yet nevertheless they share a common love. As an adult, reminiscing on his baseball experiences with his father, the son through his retrospective point of view now appreciates his father for all his father did. This poem employs diction and varying points of view to emphasize the lack of understanding between the two characters, while symbols and figurative comparisons express their mutual love; this poem analyzes the loving, yet dysfunctional relationship …show more content…
The poem represents more than just the son’s recount of childhood baseball because the son wants to “let this be the sign” to his father that he loves and appreciates him (21). Moreover, the title of the poem, “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt,” adds to this sense of the poem expressing the love the son shares for his father. Another symbol, or even implied metaphor, is the bunt which represents self-sacrifice by extension. Since the father desperately wants his son to understand the value of the “bunt,” he clearly cares deeply for his son. The son claims that his father “could drop it [the bunt] like a seed,” which implies that the father’s sacrifice has been gingerly placed in order to grow strong one day (8). This simile demonstrates the care with which the father tries to teach the son how to bunt. The only other simile compares the son’s sign to his father, the poem itself, to “a hand brushed across the bill of a cap” (21). Once again this figurative comparison connotes a tender love and mutual respect between the father and son, especially considering that this simile compares the poem to the baseball equivalent of a salute. Overall, through the use of symbols and figurative comparisons, the poem conveys the tender admiration shared between the father and son, despite their lack of
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