IT Home Learning T2W10 2010 task 2

Steps in Analysis

Point of View

• Point: Insider's point of view
  
• Evidence: Author been to Vietnam in 1967 - 68 and again in 1969
  
• Elaboration: He was in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, so would have seen how the war-torn country looked like.
  

Situation and Setting

• Point: Poem is situated during the Vietnam War
  
• Evidence: "Or will a war consume them", stanza 4, line 13; birth of the poem
  
• Elaboration: The phrase shows that the poem is during a war, and from the author saying that he wrote this poem in Saigon, Vietnam (refer to task 1), we can know that the "war" in this poem is the Vietnam War.
  

Language/Diction

• Point: A feeling of doom, fear, hopelessness
  
• Evidence: "darkness", "cannot flee", " are not free", "no light", "Down some endless thirsty hole"
• Elaboration: The use of these words invoke a sense of doom, fear and hopelessness. Darkness is usually associated with doom and fear, which is exactly how the children would feel during the war, which is a period of darkness.
  

IT Home Learning T2W10 2010 task 1

Children in the Darkness
by Henry M Bechtold

The author, Henry M Bechtold, was in his hotel room in Saigon just before Christmas 2009 when he wrote this poem. His inspiration came from the news on TV. He was not paying attention to what the news reader was saying but instead, he noticed a photo of a small boy with a helmet and an automatic rifle in the background. The words of this poem suddenly came to him and he typed as fast as he could to get it all down.

Most children during the Vietnam War were usually seen holding toys, but Vietnamese children were seen holding a weapon, for example a gun, to defend themselves. They were constantly fleeing for their lives, thus, they did not had a chance to learn to read, write or dance, before death caught up with them.

http://warpoetry.co.uk/2010warpoetry.html