Essay Questions

What is the meaning in the poem entitled "The Colonel’’?

In the poem entitled "The Colonel’’, the narrator has dinner at the house of a powerful politicians. During dinner, the colonel brings a bag of severed ears on the table. After spilling the ears, the colonel tells the narrator he is not interested in human rights issues and offers the ears as a proof. The author of the poems was involved in many human-rights issues in countries were many had to get through such events. Through this poem, the narrator wanted to show just how hard it was for people from those countries to survive.

What are the two wars mentioned in the poem "The boatman’’?

The narrator mentions two wars while the boat was trying to escape the war. The first was they fled from was an actual war that took place in Aleppo. The people managed to get away from that war by leaving the country and trying to find refuge somewhere else. The second war is one against nature. The people in the boat knew that even though they escaped their country, it did not mean they were safe. A big challenge was finding a place willing to take them and the people knew that many will hunt them instead of providing them a safe place to stay.

Why did the narrator claim "death came from the clouds’’ in the poem "The Boatman’’?

In the poem entitled "The Boatman’’, the narrator mentions how every day when they lived and woke up without being covered in ruins was a miracle for them. She mentions how death came to them from the clouds. The reason why she suggests that death came from the clouds is because the forces that attacked the cities in the Middle East would do so by bombing them. thus, most people were killed as a result of bombing than any other way.