Wislawa Szymborska's The Terrorist, He Watches

Life is fleeting and in one second, everything can be changed forever. It is unpredictable and bad things can happen to good people. Terrorism is a worldwide issue today and there’s no way to know what is coming. Regardless of age, gender or class, everyone is grouped together as victims after a terrorist attack. There’s no way to predict what will happen or what causes people to do these horrible things, but making the most of every day is so important. In Wislawa Szymborska’s poem “The Terrorist, He Watches,” diction, imagery as well as suspense are used to illustrate that life is amazing and beautiful but can be taken away in the blink of an eye.
To begin, the individual words that were chosen for this poem depict both a lack of emotion
Creating customers at the bar that appear ordinary and familiar causes the reader to be able to relate more to them and the situation that they are in.
A woman in a yellow jacket, she enters.
A man in dark glasses, he leaves.
Boys in jeans, they’re talking.
Sixteen minutes past and four seconds.
The smaller one he’s lucky, mounts his scooter, but the taller chap he walks in.
The woman in the yellow jacket, the man with sunglasses and the boys in jeans can easily be seen walking around in most parts of the world. Having the ability to relate to them allows the message in the poem to sink in more. If these people can be a victim of an attack, then so can anybody else in the world, and it is essential to live life to the fullest.
The detail that Wislawa Szymborska uses to describe the people and the clothes that they were wearing creates an image in the reader’s mind of the people interacting with one another and walking in and out of the bar.
A girl, she walks by, a green ribbon in her hair.
But that bus suddenly hides her.
Eighteen minutes past.
The girl’s disappeared.
Was she stupid enough to go in, or wasn’t