Hi there Scholarship English aspirants,
Your task is to:
- identify a key idea in Keith Sinclair's poem 'The Bomb is Made'
- table some supporting detail from the poem
- and most importantly, explain the link(s) between the idea and the detail(s)
Feel free to write your own comment, as well as responding to the comments of others. You may like to write more than one comment over the course of the week.
Incidentally, I really enjoyed the session we had together today after school - thanks for being so interesting and interested,
Mr Edgecombe
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I think that a key idea in this poem is that innocent people cannot directly confront or rebel against the horrors of war. However, they can overcome the prejudice and resentment towards others that war ultimately provokes. This can be seen in the repetition of 'Be kind to one another, kiss a little' in every stanza, where, essentially, it sounds as though the writer is pleading to us, desperately cautioning us not to lose our gentleness towards mankind. These words stand out against the vivid illustration of the terrors of war, yet they do not lose their strength, as they appear frequently to serve as a quiet, yet resounding reminder to us.
Furthermore, the war's effect is compared to that of a spreading disease that 'multiplied, will occupy the lung, exclude the air...', which appears to be an implication that war is like a fatal disease, and emotions of hatred itself are 'contagious'. The writer expresses the sheer hopelessness of war, where the only cure is to avoid the contiuation of resentment and hence, any future bloodshed. This is alluded to in the final line where it is suggested that 'our only weapon is this gentleness.'
I like the way you've pointed to the repetition of that key phrase, Jenny, and used that as evidence in support of your opening claim: "that innocent people cannot directly confront or rebel against he horros of war", but that "they can overcome the prejudice and resentment towards others that war ultimately provokes". I think that's really thoughtful.
War is inescapable; it affects the whole world, and will continue to unless we show compassion on not only a personal level, but an international one.
War is a global issue affecting many different countries. The fact that the war mentioned in the poem has reached Rangitoto, a tiny and insignificant island off the coast of Auckland, emphasises the fact that war reaches even the most isolated and innocent areas. The plane 'only metaphorically leaving town’ shows that the people seeking to escape cannot, as the war is everywhere. The following line, ‘so if we linger we will be on time’ tells us that it doesn’t matter whether or not we succeed in catching the plane in an attempt to avoid the war, because if we miss it we will still be in the same situation as those who caught it. The plane only truly leaves when the war ends; the only way to escape war is to end it.
The ‘grey generals’ in the third stanza ‘conspire/ to dissipate the birth-right of the Asians.’ This shows us how unending war is, as there are always new plans for more destruction.
However, Sinclair presents the solution to this destruction in each stanza, with the line ‘be kind to one another, kiss a little’. At first this line seems to encourage people to make the most of what time they have left, and say goodbye to the ones they love, but later it starts to suggest that showing kindness is the solution to war. In the final line, ‘our only weapon is this gentleness’, the plural pronoun ‘our’ refers to all people on earth, emphasising that kindness needs to be between countries, as well as between ourselves. The only way we can defeat war is to show kindness and understanding on a global scale.
Post a Comment