Task two: Template analysis

Poem 1: Children in the Darkness
This analysis aims to go deeper into the poem, children in the darkness.

It is in the point of view of someone who is aware of how 'normal' children are supposed to behave and what they are meant to be doing. This can be seen by how the persona draws comparisons between the children in the darkness and normal children. This way of writing puts both the persona and the readers in the same shoes, as they see how the other children are suffering while they can still live a blissful life as a normal child.

It is in the situation of war, and this poem reflects the feelings of the usage of young children in war when their youth was meant to be enjoyed. This can be seen in line 13,"Or will a war consume them" and also in other parts of the poem, where the constant bloodshed is shown, as in line 15-16. War is a hopeless affair and one where both sides, the victor or the defeated, will suffer execrable losses. Thus, this situation can evoke sympathy in the readers, as children, who are stereotypically young and innocent, are not only exposed to the extreme depravity of war, but also made to join in this bloodshed.

Language and diction is used to great extent here. Firstly, in its repetition of the word darkness. Light is usually a symbolism for hope. Light is used once in the whole poem at the start whereas darkness was repeated four times throughout the whole poem. This word positioning shows that darkness, in this case, war, will overwhelm hope in the end. Satire is also used in this poem, with words like 'blood', made more gory by its emphasis with the words 'endless' and 'thirsty' which shows the unquenchable thirst for blood that war has.

Personally, I feel that this poem connects me to the reality of other children. While 'rich' kids like us get to lounge around in a safe city like ours, there are other children who deserve the same fate as us, but instead, due to a miserable twist of fate, end up fighting neck to neck with an enemy that they don't even know about. True, some of us may not have the luxuries others have, like television and handphones, but still, our life is still a haven as compared to the tiredness and weariness of the lives of those poor suffering children.

Poetry Analysis: Children in The Darkness

Source: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/2010warpoetry.html

There aren't many websites analyzing this poem and i only found slight background information about this poem from the website on top. However, since this is a one-star difficulty poem, I shall analyze it myself instead.

This poem is written by Henry M Bechtold in 2010, a very recent poem. Just before christmas, he was in Saigon, a place in Vietnam and was trying to write poems there. He often goes back to Vietnam because his "soul lives in Vietnam." This could imply that he himself was one of the soldiers fighting in the war then and as with many war veterans, they find it difficult to adapt back to their own homeland after the suffering they had seen. This poem was written after Henry watched the television and saw the picture of a small boy with a helmet and an automatic rifle.

This poem shows conflicting images of the author's mindset of what should actually be the life of a child in contrast with how the children suffering in war really are. The first stanza shows the ignorance of a child, in the sentence, "have not seen the light." This probably means that they are young and still in a state of darkness and ignorance, and thus, this stanza evokes sympathy in the reader as in their unknowing state, they will have to be "teach to fight." Soldiers usually fight out of a sense of patriotism or loyalty, but this children, completely unaware of anything are being taught to fight, the only thing they are learning.

The first line of the next stanza states that "chalk and blackboards will not be" contrasting the reader's view of school with the way these children are taught. The next three stanzas are extremely strong as they are written by an American. Americans are known to be pursuers of "Freedom", something that they sincerely believe is their right to upkeep. But this fighting is the complete opposite. The children fighting have no ability to be free, taught to fight, this is their only way of life, to be involved in war and probably die.

The next stanza asks rhetorical questions, whether the children can be taught what 'normal' students are taught.

The next stanza shows their true fate and why they cannot be taught what normal students are taught, in other words, it answers all the rhetorical questions. They could never be taught all that, because they will be consumed in war, 'their body and soul' will be given up to war and their blood and life will be 'poured down some endless thirsty hole.' Satire is used here to a small extent, with words like blood,poured and endless, making it seem like blood is being constantly poured and bloodshed is rampant.

The last stanza more or less concludes the whole poem, by saying that these children could not possibly be like normal children, they have no hope , which is symbolized by light, to live a normal life as it has been destroyed by the circumstances of war.

Movie Review: How to Train Your Dragon

The movie starts in a viking village, where the two main opposing factions are the vikings and the dragons. The dragons steal the Viking's livestock and burn their villages, in return the vikings kill thousands of the dragons. The village is filled with blood thirsty vikings, all strong, battle -ready and knowledgeable about the dragons they want to kill and the tactics required to kill them. All except one of the dragons, a night fury, apparently the most legendary and deadliest of dragons. Compare this to the protagonist of the story, Hiccup, son of the mightiest viking and the chief of the Vikings, who is considered an anomaly among the vikings. Nerdy, weak and unable to kill a dragon at all, he is still determined to prove himself as a powerful viking and during a dragon attack, he managed to shoot down a dragon. However, no one believed him. The next day, Hiccup went to look for the dragon and found that it was a night fury. Unable to kill it, Hiccup freed him and soon the two develop a friendship as Hiccup started to train it secretly. But secrets dont tend to be kept secret for long and the story end explosively as the two enemies realize they had to team up together to fight the biggest foe of all.

The best thing about the film was the plot. I thought it was a very deep plot, showing Hiccup's moral courage to go against the Vikings, proving to them that dragons were never bad. Despite the fact that all the other vikings were massacring dragons, he dared to be different and train them instead. This kind of courage is evident in our literature text, To Kill A Mockingbird, too.

Another thing about the movie that i love so much is the graphics. Other cartoon movies give you paper cut outs and animations, but this movie really went beyond the limits. The dragons seem to have the ability to look extremely real in battle, as did all the Viking's battle ships. And the 'Ultimate enemy' really did look extremely life-like. All the fireballs thrown and catapults shot in the movie were all incredibly real and life-like.

If there was any problem with the movie, it was that such a great movie should have the potential to be way longer, so many more adventures could have taken place within the span of the entire movie instead of just spending such a large part of the movie on showing Hiccup's attempts to befriend and train the dragon. But still, I consider this a small flaw in comparision to how great the movie is.

The character's were also well portrayed and managed to show the theme, which was that the dragons were essentially good, well. Other than the protagonist, there were other characters in the story who played a major part in the movie, mostly by turning from the typical, dragon-hating vikings to people who have understood the dragons and made peace with them. One of these people would be Astrid, Hiccup's girlfriend in the end but enemy at the start. After hanging out with dragons for so long, Hiccup had learnt methods to subdue dragons peacefully without any harm to either party and his ability caused him to be well-known and respected in dragon-training class. Astrid, who was as good as any other boy,or even better, was none too happy about this as she wanted to be number one in the class. Soon, her desire to find out what led to Hiccup's sudden improvement made her stumble on the truth by accident and she soon changed her mindset about the dragon who Hiccup had aptly named "Toothless"(for apparent reasons). Another person who had undergone massive change in mindset towards dragons was Hiccups father, the chief of the Vikings. At first, he was upset with Hiccup's inability to kill or even hate dragons. When Hiccup became a hotshot in town for supposedly "subduing" the dragons in training class, he was extremely elated. However, the relationship between the two deteriorated when his father found out that about the means his child used to subdue the dragons, in other words, peaceful means without bloodshed or weaponry. In the end however, Toothless helped save the tribe from the 'enemy' and Hiccup's father's mindset finally changed, as could be seen from him freeing Toothless from the restraining harness.

Overall, i feel that this is a wonderful movie and i would really recommend families to watch it together.

Rating: 4.2/5

P.S I'm aware that this movie isn't sci - fi but i already had intention to do a movie review on this even before you listed it out as an ACE opportunity. But I won't mind even if this post isn't considered for ACE.