Student Question
How do you envision the setting of "Making a Fist"? Identify an example of alliteration and assonance, and their contributions to the poem. What is the speaker's perspective on the incident, and what is the poem's main theme?
Quick answer:
The setting of "Making a Fist" is near Tampico, Mexico, featuring palm trees and a desert drum. Alliteration examples include "drum in the desert" and "harder and harder to hear," while assonance appears in "a sickening pattern past the glass." These enhance the poem's atmosphere. The speaker views the incident with a mix of dread and relief, and the main theme is overcoming existential anxiety by grounding oneself in the present.
The poem “Making a Fist” explores the concept of mortality, asking the question, how do we know if we are going to die? In the poem, the speaker’s mother tells her that all she needs to do to tell if she is dying is make a fist. If she can make a fist, then she is not dying.
The poem is highly symbolic, dealing with the concept of death and the notion of how we handle the unknown and existential threat of death’s certainty.
Setting
Tampico, the city that the speaker mentions traveling near, is on the eastern side of Mexico, near the Gulf. The poem establishes the setting by talking about “palm trees” and “a drum in the desert.” When writing about how you envision the setting of this poem, think about the way those images are written about.
In the poem, there are a few uses of...
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alliteration, mostly used to establish the setting and make it clear what is going on in the story. An example is “drum in the desert," with the repeated "d" sound, or “harder and harder to hear,” with the repetition of the "h" sound. The phrase "drum in the desert" is especially resonant because it creates a beat between the two words that is reminiscent of a drum when spoken aloud.
Assonance
Assonance is a bit harder to find, but it comes from the repeated vowel sounds in a set of words. An example from the poem is “a sickening pattern past the glass," with its repeated sound of the short "a" sound. This use of assonance supports the dread the narrator feels as she sees the different parts of the world outside her window; the use of the repeated sound makes us feel the rapid dread that comes over her.
Smiling
Why does the narrator smile? The simple gesture her mother tells her to complete seems far too insubstantial to hold back the “woes” of life, but it works. As you consider this concept, you should think about the last image of the poem—the idea of sitting behind all of our problems and clenching our hands to let ourselves know that we are still alive—and how it connects to the idea of the smile.
Theme
When you write about a theme, you should think about what is being explored in the text in regard to human nature as a whole. The poem deals with the existential reality that we all will die, but it also proposes a simple solution to that dread: squeeze your hand, be grounded, and know that you are alive. You should focus on overcoming the challenges presented by existential anxiety.
References