Toy Boat

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Attention & Perspective

Had Timothy Loehmann, the police officer who shot and killed Rice, taken more time to examine the toy gun Rice was playing with, he would have noticed that it was a pellet gun and Rice wasn’t threatening anyone with it. Loehmann didn’t. While nothing can undo Loehmann’s lack of attention, Vuong’s “Toy Boat” is clearly interested in examining the titular toy closely and carefully. The speaker pays careful attention to the toy because a lack of this kind of observation and scrutiny contributed to Rice’s death.

The first stanza notes the toy’s color: “yellow plastic / black sea” (Lines 1-2). The second stanza examines the toy’s shape and placement: “eye-shaped shard / on a darkened map” (Lines 3-4). The boat is further described in stanza five:

toy boat—oarless

each wave

a green lamp

outlasted (Lines 14-17).

The scrutiny the poem gives to the titular toy boat is not reparative, it cannot bring Rice back to life. Nonetheless, the poem is making an argument that this type of attentiveness is important. In the future, careful observation could help prevent another child from being shot to death with a real gun while holding a toy one, thus attention is an important theme of the poem.

Lack Of Closure

“Toy Boat” resists closure in two important ways—first, the poem lacks any terminal punctuation. In fact, there are only four pieces of punctuation in the whole poem: two em dashes (Lines 6 and 14), an ampersand (Line 13), and a hyphen (Line 23). Rather than bring things to a close like a period would, or even a pause as a comma would, these pieces of punctuation keep their respective lines going. The lack of any periods in “Toy Boat” means that, rather than coming to a definitive end, the words of the poem are kept waiting for the expected terminal punctuation, which never arrives.

Second, the poem presents the titular boat as “waiting” (Lines 9, 21, and 22). The toy is not being actively played with, but it also hasn’t been officially outgrown or discarded. Instead, it is hanging, waiting in a kind of limbo. The speaker of the poem is considering both the titular “toy boat” and Rice (to whom the poem is dedicated) at once (See: Analysis). The lack of closure in the poem suggests that there is no closure after Rice’s death at the hands of the police.

Racism And Police Brutality

“Toy Boat” is written “For Tamir Rice,” a Black child who was shot and killed by a white police officer, thus racism and police brutality committed against Black Americans are important themes of the poem. In sharp contrast to the titular toy boat, which is small and playful, racism is enormous and threatening. This contrast and incongruity contributes to the irony in the poem (See: Poem Analysis).