How does Louise Glück use literary devices in "Study of My Sister" to develop her theme?

In the poem "Study of My Sister," the poet, Louise Glück, reflects upon the life of her sister, who tragically died before the poet was born. Glück has written elsewhere (see the reference link below) that her sister's death "was not my experience, but her absence was." Although this poem is ostensibly about the meaning of the poet's sister's life, it is also about the meaning of the poet's life without her sister.

In the opening lines of the poem, Glück says that in America people respect "what is concrete, visible." The implication here is that Glück feels that her sister's life is perhaps not as respected as it should be, and that's because her sister's life is no longer "concrete" or "visible." Diction like "concrete" and "visible" immediately suggests that people place too much meaning on what is on the surface and not enough on what is beneath the surface. In the rest of the poem, Glück suggests that her sister's life has meaning in terms of the absence that she, Glück, feels inside of her, beneath her surface.

There are three rhetorical questions in the poem. In the first stanza, Glück says that Americans always ask, "What is it for? What does it lead to?" In the final stanza, Glück says that people also ask, "What did you build?" These rhetorical questions convey an inquisitive tone and help Glück to convey that this is a poem about the questions people ask in order to find the meaning of a life.

In the second half of the poem, Glück uses an extended simile to compare her sister's life to a "small child / who spends all day entertaining herself / with the colored blocks." After playing with these blocks, the child looks up at her parents who ask her, "What did you build?" The child seems not to understand the question and looks "blank" and "confused." The idea here is that, to the child, the desire for purpose and meaning is absurd. The child played with the blocks simply to enjoy playing. She did not attribute any meaning or purpose to the play, and when her parents ask her for one, she doesn't understand. Through this simile Glück impacts the reader on an emotional level by evoking sympathy for the child. In turn, Glück perhaps hopes that the reader will sympathize with the child's point of view in regards to the absurdity of trying to attach a meaning to everything.

The sympathy that Glück hopes to evoke for the child is also evoked through the syntax of the line "so blank, so confused." The word "so" in this sentence functions both times as an intensifier to emphasize the proceeding adjective. We thus sympathize with the child because she is especially confused by her parents' question. As noted above, the more we sympathize with the child, the more we sympathize with her feeling that life can and perhaps should, at least sometimes, be allowed to be meaningless.

How does Louise Glück use imagery to shape meaning in the poem "Study of My Sister"?

Louise Glück's poem “Study of My Sister” begins with a general observation that in America, people value the things that are visible and concrete, that have specific uses and specific goals. The poem then shifts to an image of the speaker's sister putting her fork down. She has clearly been eating something, participating in a daily meal, going about her normal routine. Yet what she says next is clearly not part of that routine. She feels “as though she should jump off a cliff,” she proclaims. This is a rather cliche sort of image, yet it grasps readers' attention. We know exactly what the sister means and wonder if she is in earnest or only speaking in frustrated exaggeration.

The speaker goes on to explain that “a crime has been committed against a human soul.” We are not told what that crime is. Rather the speaker provides an extended image to help us understand the effects of that crime. She describes a child building with colored blocks, radiant in enjoyment and accomplishment and showing her parents her latest creation. In displaying her creation, the child is also giving herself to her parents, but their response is a lack of comprehension. “What did you build?” they ask the girl. The child is confused. Her parents don't understand why, and they simply ask again.

At this point, we feel sorry for the child. She has created something she thinks is beautiful and interesting. It doesn't have to be anything in particular, anything useful or even identifiable. It is simply the child's creation, and she is happy with it. Yet her parents don't understand, and in their question, they reject not only their child's creation but the child herself. We are left wishing that the parents would have exclaimed over the child's blocks with delight and praise.

This, apparently, is the type of crime the speaker's sister is lamenting, the rejection of beauty and the insistence on usefulness, the rejection of a person due to a lack of understanding, and the inability to recognize a gift when it is given.