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  • Essay / "After I Speak No More"; a message about the impact of the Holocaust in "Shooting Stars"

    Humans inflict suffering on other humans and when events are forgotten, they repeat themselves. In the poem "Shooting Stars", Carol Ann Duffy tells the shocking story of a prisoner held by the Nazis in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. This is a poem in which human suffering. is actively depicted. Duffy uses an enigmatic title as well as effective imagery that explores the theme of human suffering. The general connotation applied to the phrase "Falling Stars" is that of a falling star or beauty and brilliance. of a fireworks display representing the women of the holocaust. Say no to plagiarism Get a custom essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned” Get the original essay “Shooting Stars” is written. from the perspective of a Jewish woman who was killed during the Holocaust. The woman speaks to another woman about the atrocities she endured as a Jewish people and how despite all the difficulties, faith remains. Structurally, the poem is uniform. It has a title followed by six stanzas of four lines. The poem is also placed exactly in the center of the page, which can express the uniformity of war. Immediately establishing the darkness and horror in the first stanza, Duffy begins the poem with “After I speak no more.” This triggers in readers a strong image of silence and death, followed by an even greater horror: “they are breaking our fingers.” Before using traditional Jewish names, she uses contradictory images of the covenant, a symbol of eternal love, trust and profit through juxtaposition. This reveals the courage that women calmly displayed when facing death. In the second stanza, Carol Ann Duffy addresses women as being “straight as statues.” It depicts women as individuals who stare straight ahead, courageously awaiting the bullet of death. Intensifying the imagery of endless violence, the repetition of the word “Remember” impacts and speaks personally to the reader. Moreover, the repetition of “Remember” resonates in our heads like a guilty conscience, it can represent the last word of a human being in the hands of incompetent young men. The writer's demand in this stanza is to remember the losses suffered because she does not want the world to forget. Therefore, if we forget and do not change our ways, the world will be “forever bad.” Since the character in this poem is a victim of the holocaust, the account given from the point of view of one of the suffering allows the reader to appreciate the magnitude that inhumanity can inflict. Beginning the fourth stanza with a contrast of "preparing to die" next to "a perfect April evening", it sets the mood of a perfect evening as people suffer and others smoke near the grave of a dead man. The penultimate line of the fourth stanza includes the onomatopoeia “trickled” which represents the urine flowing down his legs as his last dose of dignity. “Click” and “trick” represent the sounds of a gun. Perhaps this is a “trick” of pretending to shoot but using an empty bullet chamber while playing with the lives of those already suffering. In the next stanza, Duffy consistently uses the word “after” to describe this after “the immense suffering.” , "terrible wailing" and the holocaust is over, people will return to their normal pre-holocaust lives and do the things they usually did. It reminds us that the enormity of the holocaust had little impact because, today, humans still enjoy.