'A Loss Of Innocence Illustrated In The Butterfly'

The speaker in The Butterfly is Friedman, when he lived in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. The poem conveys images of a bright world beyond a grimy window. Friedman gives a message of the innocence stripped away by the Holocaust. He uses the metaphor of a butterfly to portray such a loss of innocence. His use of adjectives also emphasizes his view of the scene. The statement “Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto” is the most cogent line of the poem. Children cannot survive in the ghetto, just like butterflies cannot survive in an enclosed area for too long. In other words, the butterfly is a metaphor for childlike innocence. Friedman accentuated this metaphor throughout the poem. He was just a teenager at the time of the Holocaust, writing