A Mother In A Refugee Camp Poem Analysis

In the life of a human being, growing up is a key component of life as it develops your behaviours and attitudes as an individual. Childhood itself is like a blank canvas that gets painted on by the people, incidents and environment that you experience over the years. Many poems have revolved around this topic in ways where the protagonist have to experience some sort of pain through loss, and others where they learn from a lesson through their seniors. Examples of poems which the protagonists have to experience their childhood through themselves include ‘a Mother in a refugee camp,' ‘half past two,' ‘piano,' and ‘hide and seek,' then others which the protagonist get to experience situations and learn a lesson, include ‘if,’ and ‘once upon a time’.

Poems which places the …show more content…
This is shown in many examples of the poem such as in the quote of line 1, Achebe describes the tenderly love of the mother and son as ‘no madonna and child could touch’ describes how the mother and son are really close and have a really loving relationship, symbolising Mary and Jesus, the poet conveys a message where not even the paintings of Mary and Jesus can grasp how tender their relationship are. Also in line 8, from quote ‘other mothers there had long ceased to care, but not this one’ shows that the mother still hasn't given up on her son with the comparison to the other mothers in the refugee camp, but with the quote in line 9 ‘she held a ghost-smile between her teeth’ and ‘a broken comb and combed’ symbolises that although the mother understands that her son is no longer here with the use of the ‘broken comb’ she still hasn't given up on him as she still ‘combed’ with the analogy that the comb is the son who pasted away. The additional use of juxtaposition in ‘ghost-smile’ and the repetition of ‘comb’ further places stress on the mother not giving