July 15th, 2008 The Naked Goodbye

Showing your naked body to the opposite sex is often considered a bad idea. It is extremely embarrassing and it makes people think that you are insane. If a male ever does that to me, I would probably kick him in the stomach. Never had I known that displaying a naked body could be associated with love until I read Sharon Olds’s touching poem, “The Lifting”. In the poem, such an action is a farewell before a father’s death and it leads to a dramatic change of the speaker’s emotion and understanding of the love between father and daughter.

At the beginning of “The Lifting” when her father abruptly lifts up his gown, the speaker is a bit scared and embarrassed. She turns her head away (line 2) to avoid looking at her father’s naked body. Because of politeness, it is a natural reaction of females to avoid viewing the body of naked males. After hearing her father calling her name with a pleading tone, she turns to face him. The sequence of actions is described in one sentence separated by commas, which represents the short period of time the actions take place.

As the speaker begins to observe her father’s body, she is surprised and feels pity to see his ill body. She notices that her father is old and has been withering due to the “tumor in his throat”(Olds). “Folds” of skin are mentioned as ripples in a pool (line 9-10), which is a metaphor comparing the father’s skin with water and indicates the many traces of time on the father’s rough skin. The speaker recalls her memory of her father’s healthy body in the past. There is a contrast of images of the “solid ruddy stomach”(line 7) the father used to have then and the “loose skins with folds”(line 8 ) and “gaunt torso” (line 12) he has now. She then realizes that her father’s health has worsened so much and he is going to die soon (line 13). Then the she immediately feels pity and has the feeling that there wouldn’t be many opportunities for her to see her father. So, she moves her sight down his body and her observation goes on.

When the speaker’s sight moves to her father’s hip, she starts to sense the intimacy between she and her father:

I saw how much his hips are like mine,
the long, white angles, and then
how much his pelvis is shaped like my daughter’s (line 14-16)
The speaker discovers the similarities of her father, herself and her daughter. Blood is thicker than water. The beauty she sees in her kids is actually originated from her father. She finds that a strong bond exists between her father and her, and even her children. They are very much alike. Thus, she has the feeling that her father may love her the way she loves her children.

Afterwards, while the speaker continues watching, she becomes more concerned and serious. The more she looks at him, the more she is amazed by the beauty and love she sees in him. But she knows that it may be the last chance to look at him like this since she remembers that he is dying. “I saw” is repeated several times (lines 8,14,18) in the poem, these frequent repetitions represent the desperation of the speaker to seize the chance to look at her father.

The speaker eventually develops fondness towards her father. She realizes the affection towards her father and she declares this affection in the poem (line 28). She has never seen her father in such affection. If she does not experience the moment herself, she would not believe it would happen (line 23-29) because she has never imagined that to happen. She did not believe that she would love her father so much that she is reluctant to take her eyes off him.

The speaker then understands the passionate and mutual love between she and her father. And out of her expectation, the affection has outweighed the uneasy feeling and the embarrassment of looking at the naked body. The hairy sexual organ which may be disgusting to others looks beautiful and attractive to the speaker. Biological words like “buds of his glans” and “penis” (line 26) are chosen in describing what she sees, these words sound gross and disgusting. However, the tone of the speaker stays calm and natural, indicating that she does not think they are disgusting at all. The love has overcome all the unpleasant feelings of watching a male naked.

I saw
his rueful smile, the cast-up eyes as he
shows me his old body, he knows
I will be interested, he knows I will find him
appealing. (line 19-23)
There is a passionate love being grown when the speaker examine her father’s body. The intense feeling is developed in a short time that the speaker does not know how to put it in a proper way. She fails to find a right word to precisely express her love. Thus, an odd word “appealing” is used, which seems a bit sexual. Also, there is evidence that the affection between the speaker and the father is mutual. The purpose of the repetition of ¡§he knows¡¨ (lines 21-22) is to state that they both know their love to each other.

At the last part of the poem, the speaker shows her determination to meet her father in Heaven, and to reach a better understanding of love and the world. As the speaker moves her sight to the gown her father was wearing, the idea of meeting her father again in Heaven comes to her mind. The “tiny snowflakes” on the cotton of the gown is said to be rising “the way we were promised at death it would rise” (line 32), the speaker is obviously referring to rising to heaven. The speaker is wishing that they will be able to meet in Heaven, she hopes that Heaven, which is hidden by the “veil” (line33), will be visible. Just like the father’s gown, the veil will be lifted up. The last sentence “we would know everything” shows the determination of the speaker. The lifting of her father has made her understand the love between her and her father. She believes that the lifting up of the veil will also let them understand more about their love, about death, and about Heaven. She has her hopes that they will witness such a moment of truth together in Heaven.

On the outside, “The Lifting” seems to be talking about something as unpleasant as being forced to look at a naked body of the opposite sex. However, the real message it is trying to convey is quite the opposite. Like nudity, love can appear to be unpleasant. Only if we stop to observe, we can appreciate it. And love is the strongest thing on earth, it can change a person’s mind and fills him/her with emotions rapidly. Love is immortal that it can pass on to Heaven, even death cannot stop or destroy it.

Works Cited
Olds, Sharon. The Father. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.