Achebe's 'Mother In A Refugee Camp'

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1.Continuing as in ‘Mother in a Refugee camp’ when the poet mentions “No Madonna” as mentioned before this refers to Jesus and his mother Mary. Emphasizing how no matter what happened in the past or will happen in the future nothing can go up as far as what this mother had to do to attempt to help her son and give him hope. The quote “Ghost Smile” may not necessary refer to the theme of loss of innocence but does refer to the theme of growing up. The poet Achebe attempts to express to us how at some point in life everyone is going to die, whether it will be you, family, friends, but you can die happy with a “Ghost Smile” or not.
2.Towards the end of the poem the mother does the action of “comb[ing]” her sons hair. In life that

3.If a mother loses hope in her child, then nobody else will show hope. A mother is the last person that would lose hope on her child so the quote “she had long ceased to care” the theme loss of innocence is showing here as a mother losing hope in her child would be the worst thing to happen in a human’s life.
4.As well as ‘Mother in a Refugee Camp’ talking about a child’s death and the themes of growing up & loss of innocence, the poem ‘Prayer Before Birth’ takes a similar approach. In the first stanza of prayer before birth the reader can quickly notice the child like vocabulary stepping forward and written by MacNeice. This expresses the theme of loss of innocence as already knowing this is going to be a sad poem, it’s taken from a

There is a different approach in Duffy’s ‘war photographer’, as the poem provides the reader on making it clear that it is an anti- war poem to a point where the reader might notice that Duffy is attempting to get a distant approach to war, a job that not many people know exist and just how much damage it could cost the person and his innocence, but also of what he has to remember as he grows up. Duffy administers the proving of the short term effects of being in a war such as watching the man-made horrors being fulfilled in front of his eyes, and in between the direct aftermath of war as the long term problems war has on its victims relating it to a human’s loss of innocence. The poem brings out the reader’s emotion, and makes their “eyeballs prick out with tears, between the bath and pre-lunch beers” displaying how the imagery puts the reader into a state of passive anger and hidden apathy. The reason is a reader might be angry while knowing about the happening, but secretly does not have any concern because it does not include them. This hidden apathy leads to the loss of innocence, but also is one of the ways of how humans grow up. In War Photographer, Duffy creates some powerful and disturbing images in this poem. Three in particular stood out, one of them is “a hundred agonies in