19 pages • 38 minutes read
Joseph O. LegaspiThe Red Sweater
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014A 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
Clothing
Clothing is associated with both public and private identity, just as it is a basic need and a tool for self-expression. Clothing communicates information about roles and positions in a system and signals belonging.
The titular red sweater is the main piece of clothing in the poem, and it is described in loving detail, beginning with color. Red is eye-catching and symbolically loaded, carrying associations with blood, life, sex, and courage. When the speaker says the sweater “slides down into my body” (Line 1), the associations between body, identity, and garment are strengthened.
The sweater is “soft / lambs wool” (Lines 1-2). It is a natural fabric—a marker of quality. It “fits like a lover, / sleeves snug, thin on the waist” (Lines 6-7). The knit invites touch. The speaker runs his fingers through it (Line 8) and examines “[e]very clean strand of weave” (Line 17). The red sweater is “what everybody / in school is wearing” (Lines 2-3). By wearing it, the speaker can declare he belongs without saying a word.
The luxurious red sweater stands in contrast to the mother’s polyester fast-food uniform, the only other piece of clothing in the poem. Her factory-made, utilitarian garment is engineered to scrub away individual personality. It represents a corporation as she waits on “hundreds of customers” (Line 12) in transactions “under ninety seconds” (Line 13). The uniform “which, / even when it’s newly-washed, smells / of mashed beans and cooked ground beef” (Lines 26-28) carries the job with it, embedded in its fibers.
The speaker’s mother worked twenty hours at her fast-food job to earn the money to buy her son the sweater and all it represents. Her son is finding his place in America and is coming into his own as he matures.
Knit
Knit, weave, links, and strands are threaded throughout “The Red Sweater.” From the opening move requiring the reader to pull the title into the first line, knitting is prominent. It draws attention to the complexities of identity and relationships.
The sweater is not a simple item of clothing. It weaves in public and private identity. It holds a mother’s work and hopes for her child. It carries pride, aspiration, and belonging for its wearer. It is an opportunity for the speaker to consider and honor what has been invested in him.
The speaker approaches the object by breaking it down to its very fibers, where “Every clean strand of weave becomes a question” (Line 17). The questions in the poem focus on the work. It pushes the speaker to consider the cost of the gift and it poses a challenge to a system that pays a worker so little. The work is difficult, repetitive, and hot. It takes twenty hours of that labor to earn enough to buy a sweater.
Minutes are knit together to create hours, just as fibers are woven to create the sweater, and families are linked together. Legaspi shows the reader that individuals exist in systems that are knitted together to become a society, with these ties extending from school to family to work and back again.
Food
Like clothing, food is a basic need, and like clothing, food is symbolically complex. It can be an expression of culture or community, socio-economic class, and tradition. The act of creating and sharing food is a gesture of care. The food in the poem is tied to themes of identity.
In “The Red Sweater” the speaker’s mother works at “the fast-food joint” (Line 5). Fast-food is a part of the American consumer landscape and is often positioned as the opposite of home cooking. It is simultaneously associated with low wages, poor working conditions, animal cruelty, and food that is not particularly nutritious, but it is exemplary of the American dream, filled with business success stories, franchises, and like Burger King famously promised, it promotes a business model that assures customers one can “Have it your way.”
Based on the description in the poem, the mother’s restaurant serves what are most likely Americanized burritos. The autobiographical focus of Legaspi’s work means the speaker and his mother are immigrants to America. While the people in the poem are most certainly not symbolized by food, the “melting-pot” of the American mythos is in play.
The food his mother makes at her job is not described as being pre-frozen or taken from a can. It requires preparation and uses natural ingredients. The refried beans were “mashed during prep time / the lull before rush hours, onto steamed tortillas” (Lines 14-15). The speaker wonders “how many pounds of onions, lettuce and tomatoes / pass through the slicer?” (Lines 19-20) in twenty hours. All too often the fast-food worker’s labor is dismissed. This poem does not glamorize it, but it does acknowledge its challenges and in that way honors it.
Food in “The Red Sweater” is another way to symbolize complexities of identity.
