Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
Read the title. What does the title refer to? What do you know about this conflict?
Just reading the title I think that the poem is about the conflict between Israeli and Arab people.
The conflict started after the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli - Jewish massacred more than 200 Palestinian villagers, including old people, women and children and forced the Palestinians Arab to leave the affected regions.
Actually Palestinian live in a very small land called Gaza Strip and they are still claiming for their territories with frequent terrorist attacks.
What do you expect the poem to be about?
I think that the poem is about the conflict between Arab and Israeli, but I think it talks about the conflict indirectly.
Read the first stanza and say:
•- Who the speaker is: the speaker is a woman
•- What the speaker remembers: the speaker remembers the time before her delivery.
•- Why the woman was alone: the woman was alone because she was in a hospital reception, the hospital nurses were out for dinner and her husband did not really believe it was the time of delivery yet.
•- Where she was: she was in a hospital reception
•- What she was waiting for: She was waiting for the nurses' return
•- What she was grateful for: she was grateful for her dress.
Read the second and third stanzas and say:
•- What the speaker does not have in common with the other woman: the speaking voice does not have the language in common with the other woman
•- What the two women share: They only share what they feel and what they do.
•- What they decide in order to reduce their pain: They decide to stay crouching in a corner in order to reduce their pain.
Read the final two stanzas. What / who does the term "primitivity" refer to? The term "primitivity" is refers to the two women
Why do you think the nurses scowled at the two women? The nurses scowled at the two women because despite clearly visible cultural differences between the two women they were able to socialize
What did the two women share? What did they agree on? The two women shared their experiences and their pain. They both agreed corners were a great invention of society.
The speaker's / the poet's nationality is Israeli. The fact that the two women share their experience, sufferance and final joy acquires a special meaning. Explain why. The fact that the two women share sufferance, experience and joy acquires a special meaning. To tell the truth, despite their different language, different culture and despite the conflict between Israeli and Arab, the two women are able to help each other. They are in harmony. The poem message is that despite their different cultures there is always something in common which makes people similar and friends.