and in-depth analysis of the poem....http://www.boardthebard.com/attachments/1578.pdf
The poet uses simple questions and answers to describe what happened to the people and culture of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The horror of what happened is understated, the person replying to the questions always polite, always addressing the questioner as "Sir", while describing the horrors of the war, "there was time only to scream", in contrast to what had gone before, "when peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies".
One group of students performed this poem as if the questioner was a torturer/interrogator, and the person replying a victim. That brought out the hidden violence in the poem very well.
You only have to look at the picture here - Vietnamese children running from an airborne attack - to see the truth underlying the matter of fact tone of the poem.
6 comments:
I personally love this poem and find it very interresting.
I believe that the person who answers the questions would be a survivor of the war. This could be very useful because the answers would be believable if it came from an actual survivor.
Eventhough the poem has a very deep darkness to it, it still sounds very peaceful throughout, "flights of moths in moonlight." This not only sounds peaceful but it is also a technical term that the writer Denise Leverton uses, being alitteration to make the hope seem still alive in the poem. Both "moths" and "moonlight" sounding very harmonious, the poet covers upon the previous talk of the darkness that had gone on.
The poet diggs into the realities of the past and highlights the real truths about Vietnam's past. She talks through the answers and revels how cruel life was for these people, their "children were killed", "bones" were "charred", this is one of the darkest things that could happen to any society and this is shown through the loss of hope, "there were no more buds", buds representing new life, as they shoot up in the Spring and represent life being blossomed, bringing new hope to those who had none. As there no longer are anymore buds however, there is no hope.
As I read through this poem, I can imagine a little old Vietnamese woman in a hut in the middle of a summers afternoon in one of the rice fields, answering the questions of the BBC reporter sitting in front of her and asking her these questions and her pausing before answering each question. Pauses could be quite long in some questions and the sound of her voice and moth flights in the background as she talks.
The poem shows the Vietnamese as rather childlike, innocent and vulnerable - a way of seeing them that seemed to be confirmed by some events in the war, lie the destruction of the forests with napalm, and by the notorious photographic image of a naked burning child running from her devastated village. I think that Vietnamese people would like to be depicted as gentle peasants who know only “rice and bamboo”
Expanding on Dillion's point, I agree that the Vietnamese were innocent and childlike in the past from the questions answered in the poem. I think this innocence however is replaced with bitterness. I believe this because if the narrator of the poem had to reminisce the good memories and how they had died, bitterness will still come through even if it is unintentially. This mood is implied through the description of the ordeal that they went through.
The poem is written as though Vietnamese culture is a thing of the past and someone is trying to find out about it. The poet uses the Vietnamese spelling of Vietnam (Viet Nam) in the poem, to make it seem like it is from their point of view. This is most probably because the writer has links with Vietnam and was opposed to the USA's involvement in the Vietnam war.
Jack
Hmm. How much evidence do you haev for saying teat the writer may have been involved somehow? May be interesting to find out.
Is there anything in the poem itself (in the way of poetic techniques) that suggests that the poet has a personal connection to the poem?
anisha shah: madam you didn't make another page for this homework 17/01/08.
I On My First Sonne, the writer uses emotive langauge such as "miserie" it makes the reader think of sadness and depressing emotions. The is an assonance of the letter "o" it reminds the reader of the sound a person makes when weeping or crying. So this adds more of a sad effect.
This poem is about a father "all father" who has lost his son to death "thou child" it relates to Ben jonson as he himself lost his 7 ear old son "seven yeeres"
the poem is one stanza with 12 lines. This short layout emphasises the short life his son lived. It emphasises how young his son was when he died which makes the miserable tone more powerful.
On my first sonne and catrin are similar because they are both about the relationship between a parent and their child. The difference is that on my first sonne is an elegy that is about death and sadness "farewell thou child" whereas catrin is about a mother and her experience of giving birth and the time when her daughter is older " i can remember you, child" also catrin has 2 stanza's and the 1st stanza is longer, which is when gillian clark is talking about the birth.
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