21 pages • 42 minutes read
Jerusalem
A 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
Bird and Wing
The image of a bird and its wings appear twice each in the poem. At first the father, as a boy, gets hit in the head when his friend throws a rock at a bird. The father, rather than reacting, grows “wings” (Line 15). Later a boy draws a picture of a bird that is covering two houses with its enormous wings. The bird has multiple connotations. It is a creature that is vulnerable, attracting the attention of people who throw stones at it for sport or food. However, it is also a symbol of resilience. It has wings which allow it to fly away from the violence of those who dwell on the land. It can transcend the heaviness of things like stones, war, and the gravity of life on Earth.
Traditionally, the dove is a symbol of peace. Though she does not name the bird as a dove, the bird and its wings do suggest peace, especially in the boy’s painting, in which the bird’s wings are covering two houses. A bird usually covers its young with its wings, especially at night and in a storm, to keep them safe. This image of a bird covering houses with its wings suggests a supernatural capacity to care for others, including two families—i.e. two people—simultaneously.
When the speaker says her father, as a boy, grew “wings” (Line 15), she connects him with the bird, but she also implies that he is angelic. This furthers the motif of birds and wings as signifiers of holiness and peace.
Stone and “Tender Spot”
In the second stanza, the speaker recounts that her father once was hit by a stone that his friend was throwing at a bird. The stone is a small but important emblem of violence and of the unintended harm people do to one another. The speaker says that hair will not grow in the spot where the stone hit, signifying that the injury had lasting consequences. She calls it a “tender spot” (Line 8) and relates this to a more universal “we,” saying, “Each carries a tender spot: / something our lives forgot to give us” (Lines 16-17). This is a signifier of where any person feels pain because something is missing. The next lines suggest that what is missing for her father and grandmother are home and family. The father is an exile who “builds a house” (Line 18) to try to feel at home in his new country. The grandmother speaks to her olive tree in place of her son. The fact that her father had to become an exile is the tender spot that her father carries. It is the pain he feels at being forced to flee his country, yet others’ tender spot may be anything that a person feels is missing.
Importantly, in the fifth stanza the speaker equates this spot to “a place in my brain / where hate won’t grow” (Lines 32-33). Although this spot is where the person was originally wounded, it will not produce the hate one might expect to appear as a result of their injury. Instead, it is “tender” (Line 8). The word tender refers to the soft pain of a bruise, but it also connotes a “tenderness of heart”—a feeling of empathy and kindness for others. She calls this transformation of the site of the injury a “riddle” (Line 34) because it is illogical by social norms to give up hatred or a desire for retribution. The speaker suggests that whatever force allows her father or anyone to forgive and develop empathy is inexplicable, a kind of riddle. It ties in with the thought that she is not interested in “who suffered the most” (Line 2) but rather in those who get over it. Those who have this “tender spot” (Line 16) are those who have turned towards empathy instead of hatred, those who have grown wings.
Pears and Olives
The speaker of “Jerusalem” notes two kinds of fruit: pears and olives. Fruit represents birth, the way that the planet reproduces itself, and the way that trees feed people. The fruit of a tree may represent the result of an action, but fruit can also represent the gifts of nature.
After the father gets hit with the stone, he stands up, and “[a] bucket of pears / in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home. / The pears are not crying” (Lines 10-12). This signifies the Earth’s kindness, providing him and his home with fruit. The pear is iconic in the Middle East, an emblem of the kindness of the land in this region in particular. The pears are also “not crying” (Line 12), which signifies they do not find the need for sorrow, though people remove them off their home in the trees. It shows nature is resilient and abundant, capable of reproducing itself and feeding others, even when hurt. The boy in this poem learns from the natural world how to be resilient. The significance of the pears “welcom[ing]” (Line 11) the boy home suggests that he has a home full of love and support, where family members likely teach him to be resilient and how to heal. This makes the fact that he has to leave the country and his family later in life even more poignant.
Later, the woman, possibly inspired by the poet’s grandmother, speaks to her olive tree in place of her son. When she does this, “olives come” (Line 21). It is the Earth’s way of providing the mother something nourishing, even if it is not the thing she most wanted. As with the pears, this fruit signifies the kindness of the Earth, feeding, nourishing, soothing and even teaching the people around the trees that produce the fruit. Also, as with the pears, the olive is associated with the Middle East, indicating that this poem is set in Palestine, and that the mother of this poem is likely the speaker’s grandmother. Olives are among the oldest known cultivated trees in the world, grown extensively along the Mediterranean coast. The trees became a hot issue in the region when Palestinians accused Israeli settlers of uprooting and destroying them, their chief supplier of income, in the occupied West Bank city of Safrit.
Unlock all 21 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Naomi Shihab Nye
