Fairy Tale Allusion Poetry: "Will" by Jane Yolen

Yolen directly alludes to WWII and her father’s role in it by saying, “compound near Kiev” and “white against the Russian snows”. As the poem goes on, Yolen directly ties the wolf in Little red riding hood to her father, William, saying he is neither “ William, not Will, but Wolf.” revealing that her father’s identity is not “William”, a more formal way that people outside of family address him as nor “Will”, a less formal and more familiar way people who are family and friends address him as, but, “Wolf”, his true identity. In this line, Yolen alludes to  both the war and the wolf to symbolize that the loss of innocence her father faced as it  was devoured by the war.  Yolen further accentuates the lasting effects of the war by saying, 

“ Why grandfather, my children cry,

what great teeth you have,

before he devours them

as he devoured me,

all of me,

bones and blood,

all of my life.”, to exemplify that her father’s PTSD driven “wolf” identity has betrayed them by forever stealing the innocence and the happiness from their family and hers. The post- WII families were tainted by  the sinister of the war.  

In Jane Yolen’s “Will”, repetition underlines the pain and betrayal the speaker feels at her father’s choice to obscure his past and furthers the notion that in the modern day, the concealment of one’s past will invariably hurt one’s loved ones. The repetition in “that name”,  “that place of birth”, “that compound near Kiev” gives the speaker a mournful tone and emphasizes how she feels excluded from a huge part of her own loved one’s life. Then in the line “Not William, not Will, but Wolf.”  the repetition of the short and terse word “not” makes the line seem biting, as if the speaker now resents her father’s concealment of his past. Finally, in the lines “all of me” and “all of my life” the repetition of “all” shows the extent of which the concealment hurt her. Through this use of repetition, Yolen comments on how, especially with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder prevalent in the present day, it is more harmful than helpful to conceal the past from your loved ones.

Yolen immediately launches the reader into beastly imagery, detailing “little bones and teeth”, or scraps of prey left behind by a predator that has eaten its fill. Although the predator attempted to hide these remains by burying them, as her father and other veterans try to conceal their military pasts, Yolen asserts that the detritus will one day be “harrowed from grave’s soil”, or violently exposed for others, such as his family, to “tell different tales”, to inflict the family with painful secrets.

When bones and sinews are splitting and hair is growing, it indicates that a creature’s body is rapidly swelling. When her father’s war past is revealed, her impression of him transforms from her tender caregiver, who she fondly refers to as “[her] old wolf,” into a vile predator with mangy and rough “coarse” hair. Yolen’s pain is so potent, she describes it as a monster about to burst.

After she had previously perceived Will as her guardian, Yolen’s shock and pain at discovering her father’s past warps his image into that of her killer, who “devoured...all of [her].” She deepens this sense of betrayal by describing Will as gorging on her “blood”, a symbol of family unity. The blood motif also shapes Will into a vampire figure, whose unearthed secrets destroyed Yolen and drained her of her innocence. The corruption of the pure is a quintessential theme of vampire literature, and also ties back to the wolf’s consumption of Red Riding Hood.