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"In the Footsteps of the Father" by Jennifer Ley

October 20, 2012
This hypertext poem gives a voice to Jesus as he questions the narrative path he is in and decides not to follow in it. The central metaphorical motif in this poem— to follow in someone’s footsteps (in this case in the father)— has particularly powerful resonance when applied to Jesus and Jehovah. For Jesus to follow in his father’s footsteps is to become a god through painful self-sacrifice, but in this poem, Jesus seeks to make his own path as a human being. A visual expression of the motif appears in a recurring set of nodes in the hypertext all of which use several similar images of a foot (see below) with a mark in the center that could be interpreted as a wound from Christ’s crucifixion wounds, or as the all-seeing eye of God (see below). The imprint of a foot with an eye-shaped figure in the center. Careful consideration of the poem’s ideas need to take into account that the speaker is not always Jesus, Satan also offers a path or helping hand, and that Charon’s ferry awaits all, whether they can walk on water or have to pay for passage. And if it seems like this poem is mixing mythical metaphors, remember that all faiths and mythologies are equal to a secular humanist.

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Entry by: Leonardo Flores
Categories: 2002, Cauldron & Net, e-poetry, Entries, HTML, poetry, responsive, scheduled, static, 2002
Author(s): Jenni

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