Compare the Feelings Shown in ‘at the Border, 1979’ and ‘Poppies.’

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The poem ‘Poppies’ explores a relationship between a mother and a son. It also explores images of conflict such as “Armistice Sunday”, “poppies” and “the war memorial”. The poem shows us the effects of war and describing the mother as victim of warfare as well as the child. However, in the “At the Border, 1979”, it explores how the war between countries have affected families emotionally and physically. In the poem ‘Poppies’, the mother feels very sad; “Three days before Armistice Sunday and poppies had already been placed on individual war graves” this is a reminder that war kills people which makes her sad as her son might be killed in war. She also feels very scared; “I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer” this suggests that she might be thinking of her son which wounds her emotionally as he might be wounded in war. Similarly, the mother in ‘At the Border, 1979’ also feels very emotional as they are going back to their homeland; “We are going home”, this suggests that the mother is very happy that they are back, however, the narrator doesn’t seem to understand why the adults become very emotional when the two countries looked identical. In “At the Border, 1979”, Choman Hardi uses a child perspective to view the absurdities of both adult behaviour and borders that were caused by conflicts. In this poem, the narrator doesn’t understand why crossing the border was very important to the adults when it’s physically easy to cross. The narrator’s sister puts her leg across the border and her left leg in the other, which seems that crossing the border doesn’t seem important to young people. The child-like language make the narrator’s feelings about the border seems obvious, “The border guards told her off”, this also suggests that the guards are silly for actually caring

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