Analysis Of Ironing Their Clothes By Julia Alvarez

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality” -Lewis Caroll. However, the speaker of the poem “Ironing Their Clothes” by Julia Alvarez believed that imagination will create a reality. The speaker lacks affection from her family members since their lives are too busy for love. She uses her duty to connect with her father, mother, and sister by replacing them with their clothing. She believes that she can not only express her love for them through this, but also mend all of their troubles. The author Julia Alvarez constantly uses metonymy,
(replacing the name of a thing with the name of something else that is associated with it) to help emphasize on the concept of feeling alone. This is understandable depicting that solitude stimulates …show more content…
The speaker of the poem “ironing Their Clothes” by Julia Alvarez uses her imagination to feel affection from her family members. Everyone in the family have their own duties to take care of; therefore, there is no time for love. The speaker’s duty is to iron the clothing of her father, mother, and sister; furthermore, she uses the iron to connect with them. The speaker emphasizes that her father is old and tired with the use of metonymy and with her imagination she tries to fix their troubles. “I ironed out my father’s back, cramped and worried with work.” In the speaker’s imagination she believes that she is helping her father by massaging his back, but in reality she is ironing his shirt. The author Alvarez uses metonymy to show how the speaker replaces the shirt with her father. She wants to solve his issues for him because she realizes that her father is old and is tired from his duties. “I would have made a boy again out of a tired man.” The iron symbolizes a solution. The speaker imagines herself taking the wrinkles out of his forehead to make him young again. She then believes that since he is young, he will now be happy; as a result, she may receive affection from her dad again. Nevertheless, she tends to forget that this is impossible to do and that may she will be alone forever. Therefore, her mother is who she depends on …show more content…
The author makes sure to use the figurative speech of metonymy to replaces the names of others to ones associated with it. In this case, the pieces of clothing owned by her family members was used as a replacement for them. The speaker tries to solve her father tired and old issues, and tries to express her passion and tenderness for her mother and sister by properly ironing their difficult pieces of clothing. Even though the speaker fails to notice that her attempts will not change the way the family acts towards her, she uses her imagination to hide this deception and will continue to trust that imagination will soon bring