The Gift in Wartime
Tran Mong Tu
About The Author
Tran Mong Tu was born and grown
up in Hai Dong, North Vietnam in 1943. She worked for Associated Press in South
Vietnam in the 1960s. She moved to the US in 1975 after South Vietnam fall.
Tran had wanted to be a writer since elementary school, but her poetry was not
published until she reached the United States. Today, she frequently
contributes poems and short stories to Vietnamese literary publications in the
US and other countries. “War is a terrible thing,” says Tran, who has
first-hand experience of the Vietnam War (1954-1975). According to Tran, “The
Vietnam War is a shameful experience, for both Vietnamese and Americans.” Many
people in both countries felt the terrible tragedy of the war. Losses in the
war were heavy; more than two million Vietnamese and 57,000 Americans died
About
The Poem
In the poem 'The Gift in
Wartime', Tran addresses an absent person. For example, as she says, “I offer
you roses,” the person to whom she is speaking is not present and can neither hear
nor understand what she is saying.
Summary:
The Gift in Wartime is a war
poem which tells us the saddening, gloomy effects of war on the family members
who have lost their near and dear ones in war. It focuses on the differences in
their lives after they have lost them. Here we find heart wrenching
feelings of the speaker who has lost her husband in war.
The poem is written in a dramatic
monologue form, where the speaker (a widow) addresses an unknown
"you", who is in fact her (dead) husband. On the surface level it is
only an account what gifts she gave to her husband, and in return what he gave
her. She has offered rose on his grave and has covered it with her wedding
gown. She has offered him her youth, her prime time, her love, and pleasant
spring.
In return, the husband's gifts
are: his medals, badges, his uniform (war dress), stained with his blood and
smell of his enemy's blood. He is dead now, so his dead body also has been a
gift to her.She ends her saying hopefully to meet him in their next life.
She will keep the shrapnel as a token, which will help them know and
recognize each other in next life.
When we analyze the different
images, (the gifts exchanged), we feel how lonely and helpless she feels when
her husband has gone. All the pleasures and charms of her life have gone with
the man leaving the world.
Understanding the text:
Answer the following
questions:
a. Who is the speaker
addressing and why can that person not hear or understand what she is saying?
Ans: The speaker is
addressing her husband. But he cannot hear her because he is not alive. He has
lost his life in the war field.
b. What can you infer about
the speaker's feelings for the person addressed as "you”?
Ans: Her feelings
for that person are full of love, affection and devotion. She has gifted him
her prime youth (Spring) and all the pleasures of life. She is saddened by his
death. Although he is no more in the world, she is still hopeful to meet him in
their next life.
c. What is the speaker's
attitude towards war?
Ans: The speaker's
attitude towards war is very bitter and full of sadness.
d. In what ways do you think
this person's fate has affected the speaker?
Ans: This person
(speaker's husband) became a victim of ill fate. He lost his life in battle
life. Naturally, this has affected the speaker very badly. She has lost her
husband. All the charms of her life have gone. She has now been all alone in
this world.
e. What does the speaker
promise at the end of the poem? Why do you think the speaker does this?
Ans: The speaker
promises her dead husband to meet in their next life. She has also kept his
shrapnel as a token to recognize each other. She promises because of her deep
and honest love for him.
Reference to the context:
a. What is the theme of the poem?
Ans: The major theme
of this poem is her memory and mourning for her husband. This is also about the
futility of lives lost in war.
b. What imagery from the poem
made the greatest impression on and why?
Ans: The poet has
used several powerful images in this poem.
Among them all, I liked the
shrapnel image the most. It made it very clear what gift a war can give to
human beings. The shrapnel does not only mean that it shattered the body of the
soldier, but also shattered the life of the beloved. That is the deadly gift of
the war.
c. Which figurative language
is used in this poem? Explain with example.
Ans: The poet has
used several figurative languages in this poem. They are:
1. Anaphora: Anaphora
is the repetition of the same words or phrases at the beginning of a
line. For example: "I offer you" is repeated in paragraph one,
three, and five. "You give me" is also repeated in para second,
fourth, and fifth paragraphs.
2. Apostrophe: It is a
direct address to a person who is not present. For example, the speaker is
addressing her husband, who is dead.
3. Metaphor: A
metaphor is a figure of speech that is used to make a comparison between two
things that are not alike, but have something in common. For example, in this
poem the speaker compares her sadness to the clouds in her eyes on a
summer day.
4. Irony: Irony takes
place when the words mean opposite of their intended meaning. In this
poem, when the speaker talks about gifts in war time, she is not speaking of a
real gift, but of grief and loss. A grave or a shrapnel can never be gifts
people would like or want. In fact, such are the gifts of war and death.
d. What does the speaker
"offer" in this poem? What does the person addressed as
"you" give in return?
Ans: The speaker
offers rose, her wedding gown, her youth and spring time to him.
On the other hand, he gives
her his medals, badges, his yellow pips, his blood-stained dress, his
motionless body and shrapnel.
e. An apostrophe is a literary
device in which a writer or speaker addresses an absent person or an abstract
idea in such a way as if it were present and can understand. Discuss the poem
in relation to apostrophe.
Ans: The speaker
addresses her dead husband directly, that is apostrophe. This way has helped
her to express her feelings and grief to him directly. This makes it a personal
poem. This helps her to lighten her heart. By addressing the absent
"you", she has also been able to give him the message and promise to
meet him in the next life.
Reference beyond the text
a. One way to get relief from
grief is to write or talk about it. In your opinion, how might the speaker in
this poem has benefitted from saying what she did? Explain.
Ans: The death of
some near and dear one can have a very devastating effect on anybody. This can
take one into its grip for months or years.
In such a situation writing can
help one to come out of such situation. Writing in grief helps the grief
release and thus making heart lighter. Writing boosts the immune system and increases
mental health.
The speaker has benefitted most
by writing a poem about her dead husband. She feels better because she feels
she has been talking to him face to face. Promising to meet him in their
next life lightens her heart.
b. Write an essay on the
effects of war.
Or
Write an essay on "War
never brings good".
Ans:
There can be no two opinions
about effects of war. War has only and only devastating effects on the people
who die in battle fields, the people who lose their family members, on the
economy and on the entire environment.
War effects can be long term and
short effects. War destroys families and communities. War disrupts the
developments of the social and economic sides of the countries.
While talking about the effects
of war, people only think and talk about deaths. But that is only a short view
about the matter. The other horrible sides of it are:
·
spread of different diseases,
·
lack of food,
·
malnutrition,
·
disability,
·
economic and
·
social decline etc.
The effects of war are both
physical and psychological. War brings untold miseries.
In conclusion, War can never bring good to humans, it brings only and only death and destruction.