What Is The Theme Of Making A Fist By Naomi Shihab Nye

“Making a Fist” is a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that depicts a seven-year-old girl overcoming her sickness in the backseat of a car while her mother drives. This story is meant to explore themes of morality along with the strength that is resilience in the face of adversity. The poem is structured in free verse, all within 3 short stanzas. The speaker is the seven-year-old girl, who is presumed to be Naomi Shihab Nye herself in her youth. This poem confronts the complexities of death by prompting the narrator to ask her mother the signs of recognizing one’s own death due to the pain she feels from her sickness.

The poem has 17 total lines, all within 3 stanzas. The short length of the poem is meant to symbolize the shortness of life. The first stanza contains 6 lines, with 3 of them being enjambment lines and the

These first 6 lines have a rather youthful point of view, despite hinting at topics much grimmer. The poem opens with personification: “For the first time, on the road north of Tampico, / I felt the life sliding out of me” (1-2). This personification of life as a physical thing creates an image in the audience’s head, emphasizing just how unwell the speaker felt at this moment. It also captures the sense of disorientation and vulnerability that often comes with realizing one’s morality. The speaker is only a child, lying in the backseat of a car and watching the world pass by outside. This feeling only increases with the sensory details of the palm trees creating a “sickening pattern” as the narrator passes by them in the car and causing the narrator to feel as though her “stomach was a melon split wide inside [her] skin” (5-6). These descriptions of how the speaker views her life at that given moment make the audience feel unease as they come to