“The Cripples”
The cripples in A.M Klein’s “The Cripples” are endeavoring to come to terms with their incapacity. The cripples appeal to religion when they yield self-mortification that is evident in the phrase “the knobs of penance”. According to the cripples’ religious conviction, their disability is a ramification of sin; hence, repenting can guarantee them spiritual surgery.
The image of the sparrows connotes the defenselessness of the cripples. The cripples, through their actions, concede that their well-being and healing is contingent on God’s absolution which also subject to the cripples’ credence.
Also, the cripples anticipate that orthopaedic surgery can extinguish their incapacitation as evidenced in the lines: “they know, they know, that suddenly their cares and /orthopaedics will fall from them, and they will stand whole again.” These lines, which appear in the last stanza of “The Cripples”underscore the quintessence of physical surgery which is the converse of the spiritual surgery explored in the first five stanzas of the poem.
Accordingly, the main binary framework in “The Cripples” is Spiritual Surgery/Physical Surgery. God discharges the spiritual surgery which is invisible whereas the orthopaedics enact the physical surgery which makes it practicable for the cripples to shift position in the absence of ‘crutches’ and ‘wheelchairs.’
"Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga"
In the first stanza of “Indian Reservation-Caughnawaga”, the speaker hints at the diminution of the Native Indian culture using rhetorical questions that begin with the word “where”. Some of the cultural ingredients that cannot be traced, based on the rhetorical questions, include the braves, the ‘monosyllabic chiefs’, the tribes, the and ‘Aesop animals’. The untraceability of these critical components of the Native Indian culture means that the Native Indians, at Caughnawaga, have given up their distinctive, orthodox culture.
Besides, the vending of Native Indian artefacts in the shops amounts to cultural appropriation. Native Indian culture is indispensable; accordingly, commercializing it amounts to undervaluation which is deleterious to the continuous thriving of the culture. The commodification of the culture means that, the Native Indians trade the culture for monetary gain; thus, they to lead an authentic life through the commodified culture.
