Mother in a Refgee Camp

Mother in a Refugee Camp by Chinua Achebe, illustrates the wretched picture of a mother holding her dying son in her hands for the last time, portraying both the certainty of death and the pain of people whose loved ones have died but still live life on a dim light. The poem starts with a comparison between the scene of a mother holding her son in a refugee camp with love and care and the depiction of all versions of Mary holding a dying Jesus in her arms. The poet points out that none of the reputed depictions of tenderness could even come near the vulnerability and beauty of this scene of pathos and heartbreak. This could possibly be a foreshadowing of the son in her arms is soon going to die, an idea which is definite in the third line 'She soon would have to forget', which portrays the idea that after burying her son beneath the earth, the mother would have to cope living without him and move on. Furthermore, the next four lines of the poem portray the aura of disease, illness and death, which contaminates the camp, through the description of the smells surrounding the camp, and the ribs of the children protruding from sickness, creating a picture of a truly horrendous scene of sick infants and helpless people. After that Achebe goes on to pronounce the negligence mothers have towards their dying children, that they can no longer manage with the struggle of surviving and now only await certain death. However the mother that he speaks of, in his poem, does not fall into the same category. There seems to appear a fragment of a smile gracing her lips as she remembers her son in all his glory while holding him for the last time. Her maternal pride had led her to cleanse him before laying him to rest, and now she takes 'A broken comb' and with singing eyes, she 'combed the rust-colored hair left on his skull'. The 'rust-colored hair' is an indication that he suffers from kwashiorkor; a protein deficiency. The way in which the mother acts, causes the poet to