Within the short poem Tattoo by Ted Kooser, the author construes the main idea by giving the audience a brief decision of choosing fates for an elderly gentleman with a symbolic tattoo. Kooser does this by opening his poem with a general statement that puts the reader in the position whether deciding what the elderly gentleman stood for when relating to the “Dagger held in the fist of a shuddering heart” (Kooser 2-3). The tattoo’s meaning symbolically unfolds itself as the poem progresses, as does the first impression of the elderly man’s life within the present. The poem is written in the third person point of view, in which helps the reader distinguish what the author sees within the symbol. In Ted Kooser’s Tattoo, the author dramatizes how aspects of a person’s youth can be carried throughout life, regardless of the many changes life has to offer an individual person.…show more content… An unknown bystander assumed to be the author, contrasts his youth and his current age to resemble the mark that the tattoo symbolized in his younger years. This poem shows an overall theme of how things change and that the past will always be a part of life, similar to how a tattoo will stay on person forever both symbolically and physically. The author is inferring what the tattoo meant in the past and figuring what kind of person the man once was by his tattoo. By his tattoo of a dripping dagger held in the fist of a shuddering heart, the speaker says that he looks like “someone you had to reckon with” (7). The symbol of a fist symbolizes much more than just a bare hand; it symbolizes something more edgy and savage. The same relates for a dripping dagger in which also symbolizes that he wouldn't need to think twice before taking vengeance upon a threat or
