Nazis and the Holocaust
The speaker indicates that her German father is like a Nazi, and that she is like a Jew. This is a very powerful metaphor for how the speaker feels like she is a victim of her father, or perhaps fo...
Vampires
At the end of this poem, the metaphor for the speaker's father and husband, and potentially all men, shifts from Nazis to vampires. These men go from being depicted as living horrors to undead horr...
Size
The speaker in this poem describes herself as small, and her father as immense. But for the most part she doesn't just come out and say so: she shows us with imagery and metaphors. This adds to the...
Communication
If a fan of Cool Hand Luke, a classic movie starring Paul Newman, took a look at this poem, she'd probably quote the film and say, "What we have here is failure to communicate." As we have seen, th...