Summary Of The Poem Dynamite

“Dynamite” by Anders Carlson-Wee explores how ethics is merely a byproduct of societal rules and displays that idea with a children’s game, giving cause to morality. To begin, “Dynamite” uses a game to represent how society influences our ethics. At the start of the poem, the speaker lays out the rules of their game and how “[anything] you throw. is dynamite” (6, 7). Their game has structure and rules similar to how society, purposefully or inadvertently, has guidelines for its members. It is through these rules that people learn what is “acceptable” and what is not. The framework of the game creates an environment where violent actions are encouraged and influence the interactions between the brothers. Their ethical considerations towards each other, whether they should harm or not harm, are derived from the rules of the
The brother is willing to use a hammer on his sibling, with the justification being that it is allowed according to the rule book. The implications of the interactions demonstrate the idea that one’s moral code is nothing more than the result of one’s environment. Secondly, the conflict in the poem shows that ethics is relative to a person and their situation. The start of “Dynamite” consists of the speaker telling the audience how his brother “hits [him] hard with a stick,” an action that would usually be deemed aggressive and socially unacceptable (1). Typically, smacking someone with a stick, along with it being a hard hit, would create an image of violence and immorality. However, the speaker then explains the premise of the game they are playing, and that same action can now be seen as playful. When the poem shifts to the speaker running “back behind the garage,” that is the point of the poem where the rules of the game start to supersede other moral principles