The Father's Empty Story

The Central Tension in the story "A Story" is that the boy really wants his dad to read him another story because the father has told him very good stories when he was little and the boy wants another one but the father cannot think of one so it makes the child very sad. The author of this poem uses a metaphor to describe how the boy is very sad by saying in the story how the five-year-old is waiting patiently on the father's lap and yet the father cannot think of any new story. This is a metaphor because the father can't think of a story and is trying to think of one. There are two seperate lines that these parts are in and so they are compared with each other. The author also uses irony in this poem by saying a line how the kid loves the alligator story and the child wants to hear the angel story again. This is an example of irony because alligators and angels are very different and the author us comparing two opposite ideas.