The Burden By Aimee Bender Analysis

Opening on an unnamed female narrator, this short story by Aimee Bender, shows through a metaphoric list of events the relationships between a girl and her father. The story tells of a girl, who isn’t only burdened by growing up, however also feeling burdened by the decline and decrement of her father. Starting with a backpack made of stone, the daughter so willing takes the burden from her father, in a way a sign of her affection and love for him. A tissue, given by her teacher, the lightness, reminding the girl of her burden, and how her burden should feel light. The rat and the dog, while they seem alike that aren’t, they symbolizing the difference her burden and her father’s. Lastly the flammable skirt, the girl feeling invincible in a …show more content…
The girl takes it from him, she claiming it was ‘far too heavy’ for him, and taking it to wear for herself. It’s heavy, cold, grey, and dense; the metaphor of her father’s burden. She struggles under it, while her father is light and relaxed now. Her father is in a way free, his burden gone, and he able to do anything in world. Her taking his burden gave him freedom, he no longer had a burden to carry about, or a burden to care about. Struggling the girl ask if she can take it off, only for her father to respond; ‘the backpack must be worn. That’s the law’. This line symbolizing that one must always have a burden, whether it be light or heavy. A burden can’t just simply disappear, by taking the backpack off the burden wouldn’t be on either of them, and a burden must always be on someone, even when they don’t want …show more content…
The tissue is given to her by a teacher, the girl rejecting it to start with before accepting it finally. ‘I just wanted to show you something light.’ The teacher told her, the lightness contrasting starkly with the heaviness and greyness of the backpack, it what her burden should be. While the stone is a metaphor for her father’s burden, the tissue is a metaphor for her own. The backpack is something heavy, thus why both she and her father struggled under it; however, the tissue is light and practically weightless, in a way showing that is how her father’s burden is since she took his, light and little. The tissue should be her burden, not her father’s, she should carry her own and let him carry his own unlike she is doing. By showing her the tissue, the teacher is in a way, showing her what her burden should really look like and it is not the big heavy rock on her