Harjo's 'When The World As We Knew It Ended'

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When War and Oil Ended the world There is no denying Joy Harjo uses poetry to get her inner thoughts out so that the world can read and cherish her poetry. She is a big writer on politics, and her Native American heritage. Joy’s poetry can be said to use language as a way to move people toward an Idea or action (Goodman). With that being said there are many of her poems that express her feelings but the one that will be focused on the most is “When the world As We Knew It Ended”. This poem uses a lot of imagery with what is being said, not only is there a story being said, there is a statement. That there will always be violence in this world as long as people have different beliefs. This poem can be interoperated in many ways depending on…show more content…
That excerpt sets the tone of the poem; it’s a powerful statement if the reader can see the reality in the line, which goes back to having a little knowledge. The occupied island is Manhattan, and to which the twin towers stood near the “farthest edge” of the island. Someone might ask himself or herself how do you know “it” is referring to the twin towers? Which brings up the next stanza, “two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched the sky.” The two towers, the twin towers. Again if someone was born after 911, or remember, they might not think of the twin towers when they read that line. To further the point that Joy is talking about the twin towers is “…East Island of commerce...” The towers stood at the east side of the financial district, and the definition of commerce, to put it simple is buying and selling especially on a large scale. That is important to know because one of the many purposes of the twin towers was taking multiple national markets of trading and investing and integrating them to create one economic globalization headquarter, The World Trade Center (Manzella). Having an understanding on what Joy is describing in the first couple lines about the twin towers is crucial because it helps mold the message that Joy Is trying to get across about the violence in the world and why it “ended” the
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