Filipping By Joan Aleshire Analysis

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Slipping There is something that is guaranteed for every human being. It’s not going to school, paying taxes, or getting a job. It is death. To every beginning there is an end, and the poem “Slipping” has the same concept to a doctor that is getting old. Joan Aleshire’s poem demonstrates the strong emotions the speaker feels for her father. She describes with kind understanding the symptoms of his aging and indicates her pleasure at feeling closer to her father than she was in the past. Nevertheless, although the speaker clearly loves her father, some of the figurative language in the poem suggests a darker side to their new closeness. In the poem “Slipping,” Joan Aleshire uses dark imagery to show that you should not live your life with any regrets. The speaker telling the story is the doctor’s daughter. As the poem begins, the first line describes her father’s health condition, “Age comes to my father as a slow/ slipping.” By choosing the word “slipping,” the reader can conclude that his life is about to end. The daughter talks about her dad’s health and that his own two feet that are supporting him can barely hold him up. “Years, like/ pickpockets, lift his concentration, memory, fine sense of direction.” In this line,…show more content…
The father puts tremendous love and effort toward something he has loved. This could be why her Father told her that he loved her so late in his life. The speaker answers, “I love him too, but/ hardly knowing him.” This quote means that his daughter was not only hesitant in answering him, but shocked at the fact that her father has never told her those three words her whole
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