Question

Which best expresses what the speaker's father teaches him in "My Father Is a Simple Man"?

Answer 1

It's often a mistake to look for "hidden" meanings in a poem. Good poets often have their meaning right there in plain sight. In this poem for example, you can easily tell what's going on. A man takes a walk to town with his elderly father. He and his father talk about trivial topics, like the price of fruit, and also about the deep, serious subject of death. The man thinks about the fact that his father has to die someday. He thinks about how he'll feel when that happens. He thinks about what his father means to him.

There's some figurative language in the poem that might be the sort of thing you have in mind when you say "hidden meaning." It's not really that difficult to understand. For example, in lines 8-9 the man says that his father has taken him on a lifelong journey. You can tell that he's not talking about literally traveling from place to place with his father. The "journey" is a metaphor for a lifetime of learning from his father. Later in the poem, the man says that his father's death, when it happens, will be something that "comes at me like a punishing/evil stranger." That simile doesn't even mention death by name. But there's no mistaking what the "bitter-hard reality" is that's going to seem like an evil stranger punishing the son by taking away his father.