Term Paper on "Bilingual Poem John S.) Bilingual/Bilingue Explication"

Term Paper 5 pages (1803 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Bilingual Poem

John S.)

Bilingual/Bilingue Explication

Bilingual/Bilingue, by Rhina Espaillat is an invitation into a young girl's world as she grows up in a Spanish household, yet in an English speaking country (presumably the United States). Carefully weaving English with Spanish words for emphasis, Espaillat paints a picture of a girl forced to speak Spanish while yearning for English. Nine stanzas of two lines each help to illustrate the poem's main point which ultimately is that it is a mistake to exclude a language superficially from one's life. The truth of the matter is that one cannot force a language out of one's heart, and even though the young girl is forced to speak Spanish in her home, her English words are just as meaningful as her Spanish. Bilingual/Bilingue is a statement on the flaws of forcing a native language upon someone, or perhaps of excluding a language from someone's life, as in the end it is what is in one's heart that is the true meaning of the language. Language is not and cannot be a divisive force and it does not keep people apart from each other.

The title of the poem sets up the contrast of the poem to be that between English and Spanish and it does so demonstratively and in meaning as well. Bilingual/Bilingue is not only a contrast of words, but also languages, and it is still one word. Similarly, the first stanza begins immediately referring to languages, as the "them" is clearly English and Spanish and thus the poem will be about the coexistence of two languages. One's ability to find a level of coexistence of the two languages will be an important theme to play out in the poem. The stanza is particularly effective in using the rhyming of the last words "there" and "aware" while seamlessly fitting the Spanish words of "there" and "here" into the poem. Immediately the poem works in two languages which will be further developed.

The second stanza, which flows from the first as its sentence is in a continuation of the first, develops the theme further along with the third stanza. It establishes that the poem is about a daughter, and is written from her point-of-view, and that the father is the one "aware" of the power of "words" in her life. "Two" has a double meaning as both cutting inside and splitting apart her "heart" which can be divided by the two languages. The duality of the languages is again demonstrated as heart is repeated in Spanish as "corizon" and in English. Finally, the third stanza finishes with the explanation of the core dilemma of the poem, which is that the words of the two languages may influence the daughter, and move her away from her Spanish speaking father. This fear that her father holds is that she will "lock away" his "name" and "nombre" into deep inside her heart where he cannot reach. His fear is that her English will make him less meaningful to her and exclude him from his daughter's life, his "name" and "memory" in this case is "what he was" to his daughter and thus language will take him far outside of his daughter's life.

With the problem established, the fourth stanza quotes the father as to what he is intends to do about the problem. He insists for his daughter to speak English outside the home and Spanish within. By maintaining that Spanish be spoken at home, the father is attempting to remain a part of his daughter's life as a Spanish speaker himself. He does not want English coming into his home and have a language barrier between himself and his daughter and establishes the rule. This division of the two languages, however, to the daughter is like dividing her world in two as Spanish and English are both important to her and what follows in the poem is a reaction to the rule her father has established.

The fourth and fifth stanza contain a key line which can be considered to be the heart of the poem. "But who can divide the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from any child?" It says, from the daughters point-of-view that the world and the word are in fact unified. No artificial division between the two can exist. The alliteration of two seemingly very different English words "world" and "word" along with the inclusion of the Spanish counterparts improves the effect of the poem in demonstrating the way Spanish and English can both work together. It almost sounds a desperate cry the way world and word are echoed in Spanish, yet it also reflects the bilingual core of the poem. This is a crucial point of the work in which the daughter depicts her feelings that language's cannot be divided; rather the world cannot be split up by words and she therefore finds fault with her father's logic in his rigid language rule.

Stanzas five, six, and seven establish what the daughter did in spite of his language rule, and that is to defy it. In her own words, she was "stubborn" and in the house she spent time learning English. In the poem she says, "late, in bed, I hoarded secret syllables I read," meaning she kept her English learning a secret, as she had to because of her father's rule, but the rule did not stop her from bringing English into the house. Furthermore, it is with this learning that she is able to improve her English as her language ability allowed "her to run" as her father continued to struggle with English in his defiance of learning a new language. Her ability to learn English despite her father's wishes leads to her having a better understanding of languages that her father and her next conclusion.

Throughout the poem thus far there is a division in the language, the Spanish paralleling the English, but now she calls them both her "tongue" and her "lengua" meaning English has become her language too. The poem is effective in utilizing Spanish and English words in which the sound, meaning, and symbolism unite to create a more accurate depiction of what she is truly trying to say which is that English has become her own language through her practice. Her father, to her, is ignorant to this fact, but she realizes that language will not change her or her relationship with him.

This is because as even though she learns English in a Spanish household, "still the heart was one," which shows that two languages does not divide a person. While languages may be different, as portrayed throughout the poem by the use of English and contrasting Spanish, language itself is not a dividing phenomenon. This she realizes that her father does not. The word still is important here as it means that before and after her learning of English she had a good heart and shared it with her father, and it remains the same after she learns to use the language which her father cannot.

The final two stanzas drive the point home and show the author's connection to her father, her languages, and the poem itself, uniting the ideas and making statements on the power or perhaps lack of power of language. The poem becomes more complicated here and the final two stanzas must be evaluated as a whole as it ties in the author's ability as a poet and writing this poem to the ideas presented in the work. In this instance, she writes "proud (orguslloso) of his daughter's pen," meaning that he is proud of her work as a poet, even if as a poet in English. He recognizes her talent with the English language and she herself believes that her words mean something to him even if he cannot understand them. Of this she is not entirely sure, however, as she writes "I like to think" meaning she cannot completely understand his position in relation to her acceptance and mastery of the English language, she can only hope he feels as she believes he does.

She ultimately believes her father loves her English words, yet fears them. He loves them because they come from her heart and are his daughter's own words and an indication of her talent. But still he is "half in fear" of the words that he "wanted not to hear." Because of his lack of understanding and acceptance of English, he stood "outside" her verses. Important in this line is that she refers to "mis versos" without an English counterpart nor does she place the Spanish in parenthesis as he does throughout the poem prior to this point. This means that her poems, her words, and her own feelings reflect the Spanish within her as well as the English. Just because she writes in English, she is not removed from her heritage or her father. It is a paradox that her father "loves" her English words yet "wanted not to hear" them.… READ MORE

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