Essex Hemphill's Commitments Poem Analysis Essay Sample

Circumstances often determine how a person conducts oneself. Teenagers might act shy around their teachers, loud around their parents, and funny around their friends. Adults may act and dress professionally around coworkers during the week while acting like the life of the party on the weekends. Commonly, people hide their true identity in pursuit of fitting in, gaining popularity, or keeping up with appearances. In Essex Hemphill’s poem “Commitments,” the speaker of the poem is a black gay man who hides his sexuality in fear of familial rejection. The man poses as someone who he is not to protect his image as a duty to his family. Hemphill utilizes the organization of the poem and concrete details to reveal that the man the family loves is not the man they think he is. 

Hemphill makes it clear that the organization of the poem was intentional. His organization of the poem highlights the two different sides of the man, the visible side and the invisible side. The man begins the first stanza by saying “I will always be there” (Hemphill 1). Here, he is referring to all of the familial functions and commitments that he has as a part of the family. No matter what is going on in his personal life, he commits himself to his family and their reliance on him. He notes that he “will be pictured smiling” in the family photos, seemingly happy, always there for his family (Hemphill 4). Hemphill chooses to put both of these details in the first stanza to begin the poem by displaying the visible side of the man that his family sees - a dependable son. No matter the time of day and without fail, he is there for his family, whether it be for a graduation, a critical emergency, or just a family photo (Hemphill 28-31, 33). At the surface level, the man seems to be a picture-perfect son. 

Diving deeper into the poem, there is a shift in Hemphill’s tone, where the details he chooses to include no longer showcase the man’s outward appearance. Conversely, later stanzas reveal inward thoughts, including that in pictures his “arms are empty, or around / the shoulders of unsuspecting aunts” (Hemphill 16-17). This is a turning point in which the man admits that there is a side of him hidden from his family. Before this point, the man appeared to speak positively of his family and his presence in the family. Yet now, he confesses that his empty arms would “break / around a lover” (Hemphill 26-27). By expressing these details in the later stanzas, the man’s identity is presented for what it truly is. Exposing his invisible side, the man unveils a secret: his sexuality. His arms are “empty” because he has no love to hold - no love that his family would approve of. His aunts are “unsuspecting” because he has given them nothing to question by coming alone to every gathering (Hemphill 17, 34). The man placed his family’s feelings before his own, deciding that their happiness was more important than his own. 

Furthering the idea of the man’s hidden identity, Hemphill chooses to save the most critical details until the final stanzas. He repeats the fact that the man’s arms are “empty” and goes as far as to say they are “so empty they would break / around a lover” (Hemphill 26-27). This exaggeration displays the extent to which the man feels a major hole in his life from having to hide his sexuality. There is a missing piece in his life that he feels unable to share with anyone. He wants to fill his arms and feel whole, yet he continues with his life of secrecy. Moreover, Hemphill emphasizes that in pictures he is the “invisible son” (32). His family sees nothing but a loving son, while on the inside he is withering away day by day. The man longs to bring a lover around his family but instead lives in a lie to protect his family. The man always goes where needed, without a second thought, and refuses to make the sacrifice of potential disapproval to reveal his true colors to his family. This idea recurs in the final line of the poem when Hemphill includes that it was the man’s “duty” to the family to appear as the dependable son (35). His role in the family is to be the person that they can count on. The man feels that his sexuality hinders his ability to serve this duty, this obligation. 

Throughout the poem, Hemphill repeats the theme that people are not always who they lead you to believe they are. By beginning the poem by describing how his family perceived him, to ending the poem by describing how he felt, it painted a picture of the man’s thoughts, hopes, and longings. While the man wanted all of himself to be fully visible to his family, he was unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices to see this dream come true. His duty as the dependable son surpassed his importance in his eyes. It is so easy to get tangled up in the longing for acceptance by others, that people forget who they truly are. The world is full of people playing games with each other, no one revealing who they truly are.

Works Cited

Hemphill, Essex. “Commitments.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 7th ed., Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston, MA:  Bedford/St. Martin's/Macmillan Learning, 2018, pp. 326.