Shooting Stars by Carol Ann Duffy Critical Essay
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Shooting Stars By Carol Ann Duffy
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“Shooting Stars” is a horrific and moving poem written by Carol Ann Duffy. She adopts the persona of a female Jew speaking out from beyond the grave about her terrifying ordeal before she died in the Holocaust. A powerful impression is left on the reader after reading Duffy’s dramatic monologue and visual descriptions of her ordeal and immense suffering. She urges the reader to remember what the Jewish victims were forced to go through, and begs us not to turn our back and forget.
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The adopted persona of a female Jew leaves us with a powerful impression of how horrific and brutal times were during the Holocaust based on her personal experience and suffering.
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“After I no longer speak they break our fingers/ to salvage my wedding ring”
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This illustrates the sheer lack of compassion and care the soldiers had towards the Jewish people. The words “Break” and “salvage” Shows us how the soldiers violently removed an item of value from the dead without a care. The impression we’re given is that the soldiers cared more for the valuables and earning a profit, than for human life itself. The wedding ring is a symbol of eternal love and suggests that this woman was obviously married and had a family that were all being affected. The first two lines create a vivid picture of the soldier’s inhumanity towards other human beings, the unthinking, uncaring cruelty with which one race imposes on another.
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The extreme of the soldiers’ inhumane acts heightens, when in stanza two we learn just how brutally
Shooting Stars By Carol Ann Duffy
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-------------------------------------------------
“Shooting Stars” is a horrific and moving poem written by Carol Ann Duffy. She adopts the persona of a female Jew speaking out from beyond the grave about her terrifying ordeal before she died in the Holocaust. A powerful impression is left on the reader after reading Duffy’s dramatic monologue and visual descriptions of her ordeal and immense suffering. She urges the reader to remember what the Jewish victims were forced to go through, and begs us not to turn our back and forget.
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
The adopted persona of a female Jew leaves us with a powerful impression of how horrific and brutal times were during the Holocaust based on her personal experience and suffering.
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
“After I no longer speak they break our fingers/ to salvage my wedding ring”
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This illustrates the sheer lack of compassion and care the soldiers had towards the Jewish people. The words “Break” and “salvage” Shows us how the soldiers violently removed an item of value from the dead without a care. The impression we’re given is that the soldiers cared more for the valuables and earning a profit, than for human life itself. The wedding ring is a symbol of eternal love and suggests that this woman was obviously married and had a family that were all being affected. The first two lines create a vivid picture of the soldier’s inhumanity towards other human beings, the unthinking, uncaring cruelty with which one race imposes on another.
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The extreme of the soldiers’ inhumane acts heightens, when in stanza two we learn just how brutally