Explore the Presentation of Death in War Photographer, Remember and Mother in a Refugee Camp.

The theme of death in the poems “War Photographer”, “Remember”, and “Mother in a Refugee Camp” were all portrayed in different forms to explore death and the suffering it brings. The variations of death in the three poems create a diverse image of death, which some people can relate to through the different situations of loss. “Remember” by Christina Rossetti fashions an image of death because the speaker wanted her husband to remember all the memories they had shared during her life. Rossetti found it necessary to portray death as a spiritual place rather than a physical state of decomposition so that she can finally escape to a place of silence to avoid all the darkness in her life. “War Photographer” by Carol Ann Duffy is about a man who takes photographs of death in vivid, dark and disturbing images of conflict, which Duffy conveys thoroughly throughout the poem to powerfully showcase his grief and disheartening on the situation. “A Mother in a Refugee camp” by Chinua Achebe, displays the struggles of a mother desperately trying to support and save her child while writhing in her caressing arms at death’s doors. These are the poems that represent the theme of death.

In “War Photographer”, Duffy illustrates the wrongful killings and heart wrenching deaths that the war photographer had to witness. The photographer took pictures of constant death from his surroundings and Duffy shows how he managed to deal with that and she highlights his sadness and grief from his experience. A line from the poem that says, “how the blood stained into foreign dust” is clear evidence that there was death taking place on the battleground. Duffy uses the words “foreign dust” to describe that there was a conflict in another country, which meant th...

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... were still able to have love and care for one another. The first sentence from the poem that says, “ No Madonna and Child could touch” assures this, as it explains that the love they had was stronger than Mary and Christ. This is to show that even though the mother and child were dying, their love for each other was very strong that even death could not pull them apart. Another line from the poem that reads “She held a ghost smile between her teeth” reveals that even though her son is dying, she is trying to stay strong and hold a weak, forced smile to symbolise that she still has love and care for her son. In the quotation, the phrase “ghost smile” is a clear example of having love within death. The idea of the refugees slowly decaying into their deaths yet having love and care for one another makes the presentation of death more beautiful yet heart wrenching.