Name:

Assignment
Answer the worksheets carefully. Don’t forget to turn it in so I can access it.

Worksheet #1

1. Who is the persona in the poem?

2. What is his narrative?

Worksheet #2

Instruction: Draw the timeline of the persona’s journey towards his “conversion”. Use the
graphic organizer below.

Worksheet #3
Give each line its literal and symbolic meaning.

Lines From the poem Literal Meaning Symbolic Meaning

1. It happened in a metal
drum

2. The laundry lay caked and

smelly; dishes soiled with fat
and swill piled high in the
sink, and grew flies.

3. Father had arrived

booming with cousins, my
uncles.

4. Water curled under my

nose.
 5. When I rose the same two
words from father. The same
girl kept sinking deeper.

Lined from the poem Literal meaning Symbolic meaning

6. In the mirror I watched the holes on

my ears grow smaller

7. I got my wife pregnant with the next.

Our four children, all boys are the joy of
my manhood, my proof.

8. Water is still a problem and the drum is

still there, deep and rusty.

9. A woman needs some talking sense

into. If not, I hit her in the mouth to learn
her.

10. I see her at night with bubbles

springing like flowers from her nose.

11. But the water learns to heal itself and

closes around her like a wound.

Worksheet #4

Instruction: Tell the irony behind the last sentence of the poem:

We die to rise to a better life.

Rubric:

Accuracy of content (10) –

Deeping of Insights (10) –

Organization (5) –

Mechanics (5) –