In “forgiving my father,” Lucille Clifton writes about a girl trying to forgive her father for the problems that he has caused for her and her mother. The reason I am now writing about this work is because I am trying to interpret if she forgave her father or not.  I want to try and understand what the girl went through in her life that could lead to intricate thoughts. My thesis is, why is she there collecting?

In the poem, other than the primary thought of forgiveness, there are also heavy undertones of anger, sadness and maybe even regret, and this anger the girl shows is towards her father because of what happened in her past. Her father had no money and was heavily in debt and because of this, she assumes that it lead to the early death of the girl’s mother. The sadness is because of the loss of her mother and how she tries to repay her for how he treated them, which is seen in line 6-7.

Now, in the first stanza there is a lot of talk about payday, which shows a double meaning. First it gives some detail to the father, he got paid on Fridays and that was also when the bills were due, however it also stands for the fact that because he is now dead, it is time to pay his bill to her and her mother for all that was done to them in his life. In lines 3-4 its shows that the girl is thinking about her father and with the line “like a ghost, asking for more time” (lines 3-4).  This shows how she thinks about forgiving her father for his past actions, and how because he is now gone that the memories are coming back to her as she sleeps. 

The second stanza shows more about how the father was in her past and the anger and hatred she feels. Again the first line has a double meaning, “there is no more time for youthere will / never be time enough”(8-9). The first meaning is that her father is now dead, which leads to a reason she is trying to forgive him. The second is about how she is trying to forget him, and even though she keeps remembering him as shown in lines 3-4, there will never be enough time for her to properly forgive him even though she is trying. She refers to her father as a lecher and a liar, showing the possibility that her father cheated on her mother, as well as probably lying about the reason they had no money. As she wants to repay her mother, the girl wants to take all that he has from his inheritance, but, because of the debts and the way that he lived, there is nothing left. Also in line 14-16 she talks about how her father gave her everything, which because of his debts was nothing, Thi also tries to explain why he was like this in lines 12-13 with how he was the only son of a needy father as well as him being a needy son.  Also in stanza 3 lines 17-18 shows that the bill which never be paid because his pockets would always come up empty because of his bad habits and debts.

“what am i doing here collecting” the girl wonders why after all that has been done to her and her mother she is now at her father’s grave trying to forgive him for the past. With all of the pain why she should forgive him, what I understand from this collecting is that because she is now at his grave and remembering all that was done, she is trying to gather all of the bad feelings and let it go. Not only for her mother’s sake but for hers, if she forgives him, the debts that were built up in her heart from his past will be collected and she will be able to move on without the pain she was always around.

I see “forgiving my father” not only as a poem about trying to forgive someone of something terrible and struggling with that fact, but also as a story of challenge and how in the end she can overcome that challenge., Her life because of her father and his problems left marks on her life but because of the collection at the end she was capable of letting them go and moving on.
