Reading

The Gift in Wartime

Understanding the Text

Answer the following questions.

a. Who is the speaker addressing and why can that person not hear or understand what she is saying?
Ans: The speaker is addressing an absent person. The person cannot hear or understand what she is saying because the person is no more.

b. What can you infer about the speaker’s feelings for the person addresses as “you”?
Ans: The speaker has a lot of affection and dedication for the person addresses as “you”.

c. What is the speaker’s attitude toward war?
Ans: The speaker’s attitude toward war is quite negative. She has experienced the terrible war between America and Vietnam. She has lost the most lovable person of her life due to war. Due to the lack of him, she has been experiencing pitiable lonely life. She has presented various negative aspects of the war in her poem.

d. In what ways do you think this person’s fate has affected the speaker?
Ans: The speaker has lost her husband in war whom she loves the most. While serving in the American-Vietnamese battle, he was killed by a bomb. Widowhood has left the speaker feeling isolated all alone in the world. Due to a couple of tragic incidents, she now finds herself utterly helpless, alone and despondent. She is not able to recover the pain of losing her most loved person. Her mind is always wandering back to her ex-husband. She’s melancholy since she’s always alone.

e. What does the speaker promise at the end of the poem? Why do you think the speaker does this?
Ans: At the end of the poem, the speaker promises to meet her lovable person in their next life. She wants to hold shrapnel as proof to show him the reason behind his death and their separation. According to her, it will help them to recognize each other. I think the speaker does this because her love for the absent person is so deep. She wants to love with him again and again.

Reference to the Context

a. What is the theme of the poem?
Ans: The theme of the poem is the inhumanity and cruelty of the war and its negative impacts on humans. War never brings happiness for others but only snatches the happiness of others. It only invites disparity and a dark future for others. Humans get extremely affected by war. War only provides gifts as death, blood, pains, loss, sorrows, destruction, downfall, etc.

b. What imagery from the poem made the greatest impression on you? Why?
Ans: The imagery is a literary to represent things through through the use of images. The speaker has used various images here in this poem to put forward her feelings against war. Here, we find images as roses on grave, wedding gown as a cover, a tomb with green grass, medals, badge, youth days, wardress with blood, clouds, winters, lips without a smile, arms without tenderness, eyes without sight, the body without motion, shrapnel as a token, etc. Here, the imagery from the sixth stanza mage a great impression on me because here in the sixth stanza, the speaker relates to the all those things which she has got from her missing lovable person. Due to the bad impacts of war, her lovable person has left her providing lips without a smile, arms without tenderness, eyes without sight and the body without motion. This stanza has shown the pitiable condition of the speaker’s lonely life without her lovable person.

c. Which figurative language is used in the poem? Explain with examples.
Ans: In the poem, irony, imagery, anaphora and apostrophe are used as figurative language.

Irony takes place when he poet talks about the gift which is not a real gift but of grief and loss. A grave and shrapnel as tokens of remembrance are not the types of gifts people truly want. In reality, the speaker says, her beloved’s “gift” of death has robbed her of her youth.

The poet uses imagery when roses are offered in her beloved’s grave, and her husband is described as a corpse with lips with no smile and eyes with no sight. The red roses traditionally symbolize love.

The next firgure of speech includes anaphora, which is the repetition of the same words at the beginning of a line. In the first, third and fifth stanzas, the poet repeats “I offer you”. The anaphora comes in the sixth stanza when the speaker repeats “you give me” three times in a row.

The poem also uses the method of apostrophe, which is direct address to a person who is not present or to an inanimate object. In this poem, the speaker addresses her husband’s dead body. The poet makes use of metaphor as she compares her sadness to the clouds in her eyes on a summer day.

d. What does the speaker “offer” in this poem? What does the person addressed as “you” give in return?
Ans: The speaker of this poem shows her affection by giving presents to the person she loves like roses, veils, wedding gowns, and her entire youth. She is awarded in return with brilliant star medals, a yellow pips badge, a bloodied wardress, and an inmovable body.

e. An apostrophe is a literary device in which a writer or speaker addresses an absent person or an abstract idea in such a way as if it were present and can understand. Discuss the poem in relation to apostrophe.
Ans: The speaker uses an apostrophe to mention her late husband. By doing so, she has been able to communicate her emotions and her sorrow to him in a straightforward manner. This aids her in lowering her sorrow. She was also able to deliver the message and make the commitment to meet again in the future by addressing the missing “you”.

Reference beyond the text

a. One way to get relief from grief is to write or talk about it. In your opinion, how might the speaker in this poem have benefitted from saying what she did? Explain.
Ans: The speaker here in this poem has becomesucessful to convey a serious message about the inhumanity of war to all her readers. War always invites a dark future for all. The victim on the battlefield isn’t only th sufferer but also all those people who are closely connected with him/her. The speaker of this porm has also become the victim of the war along with her lovable person’s death. Here, the saying of the speaker related with her acts and her sacrifices in her lonely life might have benegited her to forward her experience of war as a suffere to all her readers. The readers have got ideas about the bad impacts of war and its long term effects on humans through her painful feelings.

b. Write an essay on the effects of war.
Ans:  War is a conflict between two or more groups from different areas. These groups use weapons and force to fight. An internal conflict does not count as a war. But rebel groups fighting against each other can be considered civil strife if outside forces have intervened. The Oxford English Dictionary defines war as “a state of armed conflict between nations or states” and “a struggle, contest, or rivalry, as for superiority, supremacy, or preeminence.”

There are different types of wars that can be fought and they can range from small-scale fights to full-blown international conflicts.
It is also evident that there have been many different types of wars fought throughout history, each one with its own unique set of causes and consequences. Finally, it is clear that war has a tremendous cost, both in terms of human lives lost and the economic damage inflicted.

The best option to stop the war is to make a peaceful environment around us. It helps to neglect the feeling of war and fight among us and helps to live our life happily. Due to war, many people lose their life and property. We should develop feelings of brotherhood and sisterhood among all the people around us which helps to reduce the war.

In crux, there should be a peaceful environment to reduce the war and be the feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood. Otherwise, it may lead to the great loss of both people and the world. So, we should stop the war and suggest all the people to stop the war to live our life happily and peacefully.