Lines to My Father Literary Elements

The speaker is not identified by name or any specific individual qualities, but through context, it can be assumed that the point-of-view is that of an African American with a Christian theological perspective.

The poem uses verse which adheres to no particular form.

Opening line “The many sow, but only the chosen reap” is a metaphor for economic inequality.

The final line of the poem: “Of elemental rage: storm, stress, and shock.”

The entire second stanza is written in a highly stylized formal style that stands in ironic juxtaposition to the poorest economic class.

African American Poetry/Harlem Renaissance Literature/Spiritual Poetry/Political Poetry

Both the time and place are indeterminate.

The tone of the story is partially indicated by the title. Context ultimately reveals that the “Father” in the title is a reference to God.

Protagonist: the protagonist of poem is God the Father. Antagonist: those with “weak wills” who aspire to “heritage without travail.”

Although the opening lines create imagery related to economic inequality, the conflict is not really located in the financial aspect of the inequality. The conflict is eventually revealed to be one existing between those who accept the idea of having no control over the heritage into which one is born while being extended the gift of being able to overcome those conditions through struggle and commitment.

The poem builds to its climactic final stanza in which even being born into the heritage of slavery has proven surmountable through acts of will and struggle capable of withstanding the most intense of opposition.

The first three stanzas provide imagery of the labor of sowing producing the benefit of reaping as a foreshadowing of the central message of the poem which arrives in the fourth stanza. That message is in the form of thanking God for crafting mankind with respect which fosters a merit system in which hardship pays off in the wages of improving one’s conditions.

“The shyest of your dreams” is an understated way of describing the conditions of slavery as a heritage one is born into which creates the most difficulty expressing any hopes or dreams of improvement.

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“If from the soil our sweat enriches sprout” is a metonymy description covering the entire activity of human effort to plant, nurture, and reap crops.

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The suggestion that “One meagre blossom for our hands to cull” resulting working so hard in the field that one’s sweat helps to water the crop can produce a shout of praise at life’s great bounty is definitely an example of hyperbolic overstatement.

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