'Papa Who Wakes Up Tired In The Dark And Internment'
716 Words3 Pages
Christine Nguyen
Mrs. Chau Lee
English 1H Period 5
25 October 2014
Humans undergo hardships, rejections, breakups, and failure. These adversities however, are inevitable, nonetheless, they do not break us, but they define us. Our experiences mold our identities therefore; each person has a unique charisma. Both speakers featured in the poems, “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark,” and “Internment,” display acts of maturity through the tribulations they encountered. Cisneros’s “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the dark,” and Kono’s “Internment,” demonstrates the idea that hardships are inevitable, but one can take it as a learning experience to improve and become a stronger individual, similar to my progression to adulthood. In “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark,” the death of her grandfather's death forces her to face her father’s emotions for the first time. Watching her father grieve, she realizes that he is not an “all-powerful-human-being.” Not understanding what is happening, she puts herself in her father’s position by imagining what it would be like if her own father died.…show more content… With the title itself meaning the "confinement or imprisonment of people" instantly, there is a negative connotation of loneliness and rejection. In the first line, Kono wisely chose the words, “Corralled, they are herded inland (line 1),” to describe how the internees are being gathered like animals. Seen throughout the poem, this metaphor of humans and animals eliminates the Japanese Americans’ basic rights and dignity. Nonetheless, it does not necessarily destroy them. Kono ends the poem with a striking image of beauty, “Dewdrops, impaled and golden (lines 22-23).” These golden droplets emerge on the barbed wire that detains the internees evoke delicate beauty. Even through the darkest episodes, the speaker still manages to find hope and beauty in her