"The Green One Over There"

In “The Green One Over There,” Katia Kapovich creates a resentful and competitive tone as she uses comparison, metaphor, and synecdoche to show how sibling rivalry can create negative feelings within a family. The whole poem compares the speaker with her younger brother. Watching him grow up, the speaker can’t help but envy his superior traits. Kapovich uses effective comparison to set this up, remarking that “he was innately kind unlike me at his age.” Often, the basis of sibling competition is a desire for the sole affection of parents. Kapovich uses a metaphor to explain how this played into the speaker’s feelings, explaining that “Tim attracted all the love my father had frozen in his heart when I was growing up.” This vivid figurative language draws the reader closer to the speaker and helps them empathize with the speaker’s feeling of emptiness. Who doesn’t want to be loved by their parents? When the speaker’s brother falls ill, Kapovich uses clever synecdoche to convey his motivation and drive to succeed. When offered treatment, he “pushed away the hand of medicine.” Not only is he physically denying the pills, but the last thing he wants to do is get help in his recovery process. Kapovich uses masterfully maximizes these techniques to strengthen the message of her poem.