Remember Joy Harjo Analysis

In Joy Harjo’s poem Remember, a person is being instructed to remember a number of different things in his/her life. It contains twenty-eight lines, which lack rhyme and rhythm. Conceptually, however, the poem divides itself; when mentioning another else to remember, a new line starts, beginning with the word “remember.” The speaker within the poem sounds like an elderly person, perhaps a grandfather due to the in-depth statement about “[your mother's] life, her mother's, and hers” and the subtle statement that “[your father] is your life” (10-11). The listener is a young child, maybe the grandchild of the speaker. Remember distinctly projects a reminiscent tone. The diction throughout the poem is mostly neutral, using common terms to
Imagery appears often, forcing the reader to remember as he/she reads. For example, mention of “the sun’s birth at dawn” makes the reader remember the beauty of the sun rising (5). Personification appears several times throughout the poem. While saying to remember the moon, the speaker also says to “know who she is,” giving the moon a gender (3). Later, Joy Harjo tells of plant and animal life and “their tribes, their families, and their histories,” again making these unfamiliar organisms more familiar and memorable (15-16). After that, the speaker instructs the listener to remember “[the wind’s] voice,” emphasizing the remembrance of something that is often overlooked (18). All of these personifications make non-human things more familiar, and thus, more likely to be remembered. The personifications also seem to represent Joy Harjo's Native American ancestry, thus allowing her to remember her own life in writing the poem. Remember also utilizes a number of similes. In the first one, the speaker says that “[your father] is your life,” reminding the listener that his/her father is part of the reason for their life (11). The speaker later compares plant and animal life to “alive poems” (17). This gives the impression that plants and animals, like poems, are often beautiful. At the end of the poem, the listener is told to remember the “dance that language is, that life is” (27). This comparison makes life and language seem more fun, elegant, and beautiful. The similes compare unfamiliar things to something more familiar and make them more memorable. In Remember, Joy Harjo also manages to utilize paradoxes to support her idea. First, the speaker claims that “you are all people and that all people are you” (21-22). This reminds the listener that he/she is a human, like everybody, and that, while he/she may feel insignificant due to being only a single person, everybody else