16 pages • 32 minutes read
Martín EspadaWho Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Paper
The “Yellow Paper” of Line 3 is the key symbol at the heart of the poem, but as a complex symbol it has several different facets. On one hand, in its great stack, assembled through the hard and ultimately painful labor of the worker, it symbolizes the oppressive nature of the work and its product. In its insistence on perfection and ability to inflict subtle wounds, the paper takes on a menacing, threating quality. On a purely physical level, this comes from its dimensions: the thinner the edge, the sharper it is, and the more like the blade of a knife. Thus the paper represents the threat posed by mass-production driven by profit motives: given that it will ultimately be sold to consumers in pads advertising the number of sheets they contain, the paper represents the endlessly calculating, dehumanizing nature of capitalism.
Yet, on another level, yellow paper has a particular association with legal and office work. It was invented in the 1880s by Thomas Holley, a mill worker who used the scraps to assemble margin-lined notepads which found popularity among the legal profession. The color yellow has its own association with cowardice, and this might hint at a negative portrayal of the office worker who sits comfortably behind a desk while the workers and others suffer. Espada leaves this possibility open, but in the second stanza, when he jumps forward to his older self using the type of legal pads he once struggled to make, the yellowness is not mentioned. Instead he highlights that what was once a symbol of oppression can become one of possibility: the tool for a successful career not just in the law but as a poet. This can even be seen in the angle at which the paper is now seen: as opposed to the infinitely thin, sharp edges, it is now “upturned and burning” (Line 27), with the words written on it.
Time
From the first line, in which the word “hours” is added to “after high school,” the poem introduces a key motif: the passage of time. Time is one of the greatest and oldest themes of poetry, going back to classical writers who visualized it in the form of the god Chronos. This became a more venerable male figure known as Old Father Time in later proverbs. Yet, far from being a benevolent human force, Espada’s poem presents time as hostile and mechanized in its regulation of the actions of the worker. This is underscored by the punchclock through which the worker has to signal the end of his shift, but before that in the extended metaphor of the hands. Though these can also refer to the speaker’s hands, Lines 14-15 powerfully conjure the image of the hands of the clock moving ever more slowly and “sluggish by 9PM.” In this way, they mirror the edges of the paper, inflicting damage by prolonging the torture of the work. This portrayal of time as arbitrary and unreliable adds to the cruelty of the worker’s plight. Implicit in the painfully slow progress of time at work is the knowledge that it seems to pass much more quickly if one is enjoying oneself, learning a useful skill, or spending it with friends or loved ones.
As the second stanza shows, Espada escapes from the factory and “ten years later” (line 22) has moved towards a better future at law school. Time remains a preoccupation for him, but rather than the painful dragging of each minute, his concern is with remembering the past and the suffering it involved. He has described part of his goal as a poet as “to rescue the dead from oblivion” (Thomson, 2018) This means that like Shakespeare in Sonnet 15, he is in a sense setting himself “at war with Time,” which tends to make everything fade and ultimately be forgotten in the tide of history.
