The Gift

Lee addresses this theme directly in describing his father’s hands as “two measures of tenderness” (Line 10) as they remove the splinter from his palm. But this is not the only time when his father’s calm demeanor is present in the poem. His father’s “low voice” (Line 2) and his “lovely face” (Line 3) all demonstrate that the father’s care for his son is obvious and visible to the boy. As a result of this care, the son is so transfixed by his father that he ignored “the blade” (Line 3) his father used to remove the splinter. Nor did he dissolve into hysterics after the fact. He “did not lift up my wound and cry, / Death visited here!” (Lines 31-32).

This love is transferred from the now adult son to his wife in the third stanza, when he prepares to remove a splinter from her thumb, unconsciously guided by his father’s example: “Look how I shave her thumbnail down / so carefully she feels no pain / Watch as I lift the splinter out” (Lines 21-23). Lee has intuited a lesson his father may or may not have intended to teach; he has learned how to care for his loved ones and save them from suffering.