Four Skinny Trees by Sandra Cisneros is one of the most inspiring poems I’ve ever read. It’s not really about four trees, it is about four people that don’t feel they fit in and are outcasts. They have to work together to stay strong. The author uses different lines for examples of personification and conflict. The poem’s message is to always stay strong through everything because “Their strength is secret”(line 4).

Sandra included a deep internal conflict. She describes how the trees start to get frustrated. “They send ferocious roots beneath the ground”(4). They are starting to get mad that they don’t fit in. In this line they start to give up. “Let one forget his reason for being, they’d all drop like tulips in a glass”(6). The “trees” are giving up because they don’t want pain anymore. They forget to like how they live. They feel they have little friends and no one understands. The poem states, “They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them”(1). They think no one likes them. Each line shows an internal conflict because they don’t feel like they fit in and they don’t want to feel pain anymore.

This poem personifies their characteristics. She gives the trees human characteristics. She uses personification by telling how they don’t exactly fit in. “Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine”(1,2). They feel like outcasts. She shows another way of personification by telling how they get mad. “…Between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger”(5). They are getting mad just like any other human but they’re trees. They’re mad because they start to get fed up with not fitting in and want to do something about it. In this next line it states how they stay strong together, “they’d all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other”(6). They are sticking together to get through the pain like friends do.

The theme of Four Skinny Trees is to always stay strong, even through tough times. They went through not feeling like they belong anywhere and feeling like no one likes them to comforting one another. They say, “Keep, keep, keep trees say when I sleep”(6,7).  They are trying to stay strong. It also shows them staying strong in this line, “When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees”(8). She thinks the trees comforting to look at. They inspire her to stay strong.

Four Skinny Trees written by Sandra Cisneros, is a great poem for showing personification and an internal conflict. It is one of my favorite poems. She describes her characteristics through the trees and not her self. The message of the poem is always stay strong.