Li Young Lee's Story

A Story

Sad is the man who is asked for a story

and can't come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.

Not the same story, Baba. A new one.

The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books in a world

of stories, he can recall

not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy

will give up on his father.

Already the man lives far ahead, he sees

the day this boy will go. Don't go!

Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!

You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.

Let me tell it!

But the boy is packing his shirts,

he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,

the man screams, that I sit mute before you?

Am I a god that I should never disappoint?

But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?

It is an emotional rather than logical equation,

an earthly rather than heavenly one,

which posits that a boy's supplications

and a father's love add up to silence.

In “A Story,” Li Young Lee describes the internal turmoil a father faces while attempting to entertain his young son with a story. The father’s inability to quickly think of a new tale causes him to think far into the future, when the boy will be leaving him to live independently. The title simply refers to a story but this simultaneously contains two meanings, one referring to the story that the son is asking his father to tell in the poem, and one in reference to the broader story of the father and son’s life. The act of coming up with a story for his son leads the father to consider the personal story of his relationship with his son as time progresses. One of my favorite aspects of this poem is the shift between the third and fourth stanzas, where the father thinks his inability to think of a new story will cause the “boy [to] give up on his father,” and the father already lives far ahead, “[seeing] the day this boy will go” (8-10). This shift is the movement from the meaning of a story as an animal tale that the father entertains his son with to the meaning of a story as the journey of one’s life. An interesting feature of the poem that I noticed was that the number of lines in each stanza increased from three lines in the first stanza to five in the fourth stanza, but then went back down to four lines in the fifth stanza, reverting to five lines in the final stanza. The initial lengthening of stanzas and oscillation in number of lines in the last few stanzas seem to represent how the boy is gradually aging, as if matching with the number of lines in each stanza. However, when the father begins to think ahead and becomes distressed over the notion of his son leaving in the future, the shortening and then lengthening again of stanzas near the end represent how the father, when visualizing his son almost outright abandoning him, wishes that his son would never age so that he will never have to face such a terrible event in his life. Despite his desires, it is impossible that his son will never age and become independent in the future, just as the final stanza follows an increase in number of lines after the decrease that represents the father's wishes. The increase in length of stanzas also goes along with the escalation of emotion in the poem. The beginning plainly states, “Sad is the man who is asked for a story and can’t come up with one” (1-2). This is a deceptively simple overview of the poem’s topic, as although many people have had similar experiences as either the child or parent, few would have felt emotions like the father’s in this poem. It is surprising that one can have such strong feelings stemming from thoughts over a problem as simple as thinking of a new story to tell. The limited third person point of view based on the father’s perspective helps to show how the situation illustrated in this poem is universal. The unnamed father and son and the common state of a practice such as storytelling allow the poem’s portrayal of intense love that leads to worry and panic to be applied to familial relationships across the world. The poem quickly transitions from physical to mental depictions, starting out by describing how the father “rubs his chin, scratches his ear,” familiar thinking imagery that makes the description more connected to readers (5). The poem begins to move into what the father imagines instead of what is happening in the moment in the third stanza, where he has the dramatic feeling that his son will give up on him because “[in] a room full of books in the world full of stories,” he cannot think of a new tale to tell to the child (6-7). While the room may be the actual physical setting of the poem, the world contains a much broader scope of stories. The room and world may be symbols for this particular father and son pair in comparison to similar family scenarios that occur every day across the whole world. The relationship between the father and son in the poem contains many memories and stories and seems more complicated when the father thinks ahead to the day his son will leave. Just as there are many rooms in the world, there are many other parents in the world who worry about the time their children will leave them to become independent. An interesting aspect I found in the penultimate stanza was how the father compares his son and himself to gods, but in different ways. He questions whether his son is a god, as an explanation for the illusion that his son is such a dominant being that the father cannot utter a word. In contrast, the father questions whether he himself is a god, in the sense that he should always be able to satisfy people’s needs with godly power. The question form of comparing both of them to gods also emphasizes the father’s uncertainty and overall sense of sudden panic at the thought of the day his son will leave. I enjoyed this poem overall, as it provided a vivid depiction with dialogue and emotion, in addition to an effective shift back to the present in the last stanza, after the father goes through his most emotional thoughts, “[but] the boy is here,” still asking for a story, just like the beginning (19). After the boy’s endearing request is repeated in the final stanza, the poem presents the idea of an equation adding the boy’s pleas and father’s love to yield silence. Stating the this equation is “emotional rather than logical,” and “earthly rather than heavenly” accentuates the absolutely human state of this familial relationship (20-21).