Making a Fist

An epigraph is a quotation at the beginning of a text used to figuratively convey the messages and themes within the work without blatantly stating them. The epigraph at the beginning of “Making a Fist” is a quotation from the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It speaks on the mortality surrounding humanity, and how “we forget” (Epigraph) this. By describing humanity as “dead men conversing with dead men” (Epigraph), Borges connects the future with the present; Nye uses this connection to set the tone for her poem. The quotation seems solemn; however, it links together humanity through mortality, creating a communal emotion in the reader.

Nye uses metaphor twice in the poem to connect the text with the central themes of childhood vs. adulthood, borders, and unanswerable woes. A metaphor is a literary device where two disparate things are compared for dramatic effect. The first time Nye uses metaphor is in Lines 2-3, when the speaker states, “I felt the life sliding out of me, / a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear” (Lines 2-3). The speaker is explaining how she feels she is dying, and her dying is like “a drum” (Line 3) fading in the distance. A “drum” (Line 3) steadily and rhythmically beats in the same way a heart beats or a person breathes. The “drum” (Line 3) that becomes “harder and harder to hear” (Line 3) could also relate to the speaker’s carsickness—feeling faint and dizzy.

The second metaphor is used at the end of the third stanza and ties the speaker’s present to the speaker’s past: “I […] am […] still lying in the backseat behind all my questions” (Lines 15-16). The speaker isn’t actually lying in the backseat, but she feels as she did when she was a child. Her questions are still the same, and there’s a connection that has lasted as she crossed the border of childhood into adulthood. The lines displays how in some ways, the speaker is still the little girl “clenching and opening one small hand” (Line 17).