Nye Poetry Analysis

For most people, their most cherished relationships are with their family members. You’re stuck with them and you know that they’re always looking out for you. Consequently, the memories that you have with them are something that everyone looks back on, but something authors and poets write about. A Palestinian-American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, has written many pieces about her family. She has a way of sharing details about her parents without directly stating them. For example, in My Father and The Fig Tree, Nye writes in the third stanza, “Years passed, we lived in many houses,/ none had fig trees./ We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets./ ‘Plant one,’ my mother said./ But my father never did.” Previous to these lines, Nye shows how much her father liked fig trees and the fruit that it bore. But in this stanza, the readers see another side of him. Although he loved figs, none of the houses had figs. And when his wife told him to plant one, he still didn’t do anything. This shows a lot about his character and how he feels about the figs. On one hand, it could be said that he was lazy and did not want to put in the work needed for gardening. But I believe that there is something bigger. I think that the speaker’s father connected the figs to his childhood home when he used to pick and eat the fruit straight off the tree. Further, he felt that if he attempted to plant a tree in the U.S., it would not have been as good as the ones he ate during his childhood. Also, he may have wanted to keep the fig tree as a symbol of his homeland. So when he finally went back he would be able to experience the same things as when he was a child. To ruin the picture, or even the taste in his head of those figs would be worst than not having any figs at all. It is clear that the way that he remembers his childhood and native country is very important to him because it is so far away from him. It also gives some depth to the father’s attraction to the figs. It shows that there is a deeper reason for why he likes figs, past something superficial like the taste or the look.

Another important relationship is also shown in the same excerpt from above. There are multiple ways that one can look at the way the mother responds to her husband’s actions. Some people might imagine her suggestion with a mocking or annoyed tone. But, as we discussed in class, I think their relationship is much deeper than that. Although it may have been a sincere suggestion to make him feel better, I think that she knew how much figs meant to him and asked if he wanted to plant one as a gesture. I can imagine the staging now; the mother in the middle of some chores, and once she hears him talking about the fig trees, calling out, “Why don’t you plant one?” All in all, I think that Nye’s ability to share things about her characters with giving the reader straight description is a talent that makes her writing that much more interesting to read. She uses specific lines to tell the readers about certain things that relate to the storyline. Her writing is also a prime example of why each reader interprets the poem differently. The various backgrounds, upbringings, and past all play a role in how someone approaches and forms an opinion about the poem in question. Nye’s use of her own relationships in her writing makes it that much more relatable and enjoyable to read.