Analysis of The Bright Lights of Sarajevo

Hello, everybody. It's Mrs. Where of Stream English here, and I don't know about where you are, but for me, it is dark. It is cold. My camera and lighting have got me looking like Casper's ghost with a perm. So, it's pretty much the perfect ambiance for me to go through and analyze today the bright lights of Sarajevo [music] by Tony Harrison. So, let's do this. Uh I know you can already see one of the notes on the screen of line length. Just ignore that for now. Uh we are going to talk about that later. There are so many animations on this slide that I could not be bothered to figure out it. So, I'm just going to leave it there. And instead, we're going to jump along and talk about what I actually want us to talk about,

which is the title first of all. Now, of course, titles in poems are incredibly important because they are in a privileged position. Privileged position refers to the first or the last chunks of a text. Now, how big that chunk is varies from text type to text text type. In a poem, your privileged position is basically your title and your first couple of lines, and then your last line or couple of lines. So, when we look at this title, we get bright lights of Sarajevo. Now, there's a double meaning within this title. If we first of all think about the image of bright lights, there are connotations there of hope, right? Like, if we think about brightness having connotations of hope, light having connotations of happiness

and all that kind of stuff. And so, in that sense, the bright lights of Sarajevo, it's like the hope and happiness of Sarajevo. So, on first looking, this poem is about the hope and happiness of Sarajevo. But, of course, this poem is also about war. And those bright lights are they're like gunfire and the bombs, and I really don't know any of the technical language. The The lights created by warfare in Sarajevo because part of the historical context, that means what was going on in the real world of this poem is the fact that the Bosnian War was going on. So, Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Um and so, this is like a location at the heart of the Bosnian War. And it's quite a crazy what happened in the city.

Basically, this city, Sarajevo, was under siege during this war for I think it was about 4 years, for a really, really long time. So, it's got that double meaning in the title of like the hope, but also difficulty that the Sarajevans experienced with war. Now, in that case, the hope and the happiness, the bright lights, is actually a metaphor for the people of Sarajevo. They are the bright lights. They are the hope and happiness in all of this. And in the poem, we're looking more detailed at why they're the hope and the happiness. But you have ultimately got this double meaning between the hope, but also the war. That's really important in terms of one of the key messages of this poem. And I'm going to

tell you what it is now. Spoiler alert. One of the key messages of this poem is looking at how we as humans, aren't we amazing because of how we still have the ability to love and persevere in the face of destruction and devastation. And actually, that's an interesting point as well because, of course, humans are the source of the devastation and the destruction because we're the ones going to war with each other. This was a civil war. So, I guess it's also that double meaning of the title reflects the duality of human beings, how we have this great capacity for love and compassion, but also incredibly destructive and killing each other as well. Ignoring that random stray arrow under Bosnian war because again, my

animations have gone astray. The next thing I want us to talk about is actually those first opening lines. Now, an interesting point to note about the structure of this poem. I have seen this poem presented two different ways. So, interestingly, I've seen this poem presented two different ways. I've seen it presented broken up into stanzas. Stanzas is like the paragraph form for poetry. But, I've also seen it presented as one big chunk as well. So, I've chosen to focus on it being broken up into its stanzas, but keep in mind that whether this poem is broken into stanzas or is just one big chunk has different implications for your analysis. So, keep that in mind when we come back to that structure later. But, in the version

I've seen of this poem where it is broken up into stanzas, this is the first stanza. So, in this first stanza, we have a listing of imagery. So, you've got images like queuing with empty canisters of gas, they're wheeling it home in prams, they're queuing for meager rations. Like, there's all these images, dodging for snipers, struggling up 11 flights of stairs. It lists this imagery of what they are going through on a like, you know, day-to-day basis. And of course, the purpose of that is to foreground their experience of war. Now, foregrounding means that the writer is trying to make a particular idea really stand out to us as the reader. And the idea that is being made to really stand out here is the fact that their life is

incredibly tough. They are facing a great deal of hardship. And that's also kind of interestingly reflected in the structure of this stanza as well. If you think about the line length, right? We don't have a single full stop in this entire stanza. This is all technically one sentence, which is part of why I found it so hard to read because I just couldn't catch a breath at any point in there. That is a deliberate part on Tony Harrison. It's not just that he can't accurately write a sentence in the English language. What he's trying to do here is by creating this long list that just goes on and on with this like long line length and lots of enjambment. It creates that feeling of it being relentless as well, especially when that

combines with the lexical field of dynamic verbs. Now, a lexical field is when you got lots of different word classes all being used. You've got dynamic verbs like queuing, queuing, dodging, struggling. You've got all these dynamic verbs that have connotations of just just hardship, of difficulty. And also actually as well of danger, too. And so you've got all of these dynamic verbs indicating creating this imagery of how tough their lives are in war. So, if we think back to our title of Bright Lights of Sarajevo, the first key idea he's trying to really highlight is that war aspect and how much the war has been destructive for their lives and made their lives really difficult. But what's also interesting

is next to that lexical field of dynamic verbs, you've also got language that really conveys a sense of things being precious, of things being really important. You've got that in like for example prams which connotes babies and you know, wanting to really take care of those babies. And then of course the much more obvious precious high value that. But of course, what that language is being applied to is something incredibly basic. So like a pram, something usually used for a baby, something really important and special to people, is here being used for empty canisters of gas. Like gas as in you know, the stuff that turns your oven on and and and turns on your heating in your house. Stuff that we when we're not

going through a civil war take often for granted. And then also, those precious meager grams are for bread. So, what you've got here is a really interesting juxtaposition between something really precious and valuable in the image being applied to something really simple and basic. And that reflects those shifted priorities that they've got now that they are in wartime. They really highly value basic things um as well. And that again reflects the the hardships that they're going through that they now, you know, bread is everything to them. Especially again, another juxtaposition as well that I really like between the uh precious but also the meager grams. So, of course, grams being a really small weight um and

meager itself really means like really small, not enough. So, that juxtaposition between the high value of something being small and insufficient is really interesting there in showing those shifted um priorities. And that meager grams is also part of a semantic field that we've got of scarcity, of there not being enough of things. And you get that with the meager grams, you get that with the empty canisters, you get that with them being rationed. Loads of different patterns of language going on here. All of those combined together to show how much they are now valuing the basic things in life and how tough their life now is. And as you will know if you've watched my other videos, analyzing to a

grade nine standard is all about analyzing patterns and how they're building on one another. Another really interesting thing about the way the language is written in this poem is the fact that it's got a real conversational tone to it. And part of how that is created is with the direct address. Do you see how we've got like you'd think the nights of Sarajevo? You know, it's like they're talking that the speaker of the poem, which remember, we're not saying is Tony Harrison, poems create a character for their poems. So, it's not necessarily Tony Harrison speaking to us, it's the speaker of the poem. This direct address makes it feel like he's informing us. He's telling us, this speaker, about what they've seen in

Sarajevo. So, it's almost like the poem is assuming the reader is unaware of what it's like. We don't know what it is like to be living in Sarajevo going through the Bosnian War, and therefore the poem is trying to make us aware of that. And that is where our rogue arrow is now going to come relevant because one of the poem's goals is about raising awareness, making us aware of this Bosnian War and what the people were experiencing and what they were going through. And so, the conversational tone is part of that. And it's not just in the direct address. That's just not the case. Really like colloquial phrasing there, and you'd the you'd think as well, the use of that contraction in you'd is like we're being spoken to as a

reader and he's just telling us um all about what's going on in Sarajevo. And that's really cleverly matched with actually So, it seems really informal and conversational, but then actually the structure of the rhythm and rhyme is highly crafted. So, first of all, you've got the fact that it's like in iambic pentameter. So, that highly crafting of the iambic pentameter helps to make it again feel more natural because it's like the iambic pentameter is like the beat of the heart. It's the way we naturally speak. And so, it it fits with that conversational tone. But it also fits with the ideas of we're going to see coming in the next stanzas about human beings and our capacity for love and hope and all that good stuff

because iambic pentameter is a rhythm classically used in love poetry. The last thing I want to talk about in this stanza is the fact that right at the very end we have a volta. Now, a volta is when there is a change in the emotions or the tone of a poem. And we see that here because of course, as we've already talked about, most of this stanza is about telling us the hardship and the danger and the difficulty that Sarajevo face by being in this war. And then that very last line is, "But tonight in Sarajevo, that's just not the case." You think you know what it's like for them, but you don't know. That then takes us to our second stanza. The first thing I want to talk about is the fact that it's phrased as the young. Now,

that is a technique called metonymy. So, you focus on a sort of aspect or part of something and use that to define the whole. So, the people are being defined by their age. They are the young. And of course, young has connotations of innocence, it has connotations of the future potential as well. So, by focusing on them, we're starting to get that other meaning of the bright lights of Sarajevo now. We're starting to get that hope and that happiness um as we see, you know, the hope in the young. And what's interesting about our young, if we look at that first line, "The young go walking at a stroller's pace." Sh- First of all, apologies. I've just spotted I've got a missing apostrophe. I've got to add that in or like the

other English teachers will come for me and they will hurt me. So, on the stroller's pace, stroll has connotations of being really like slow and relaxed. That is a huge juxtaposition compared to our verbs that we had in the previous stanza of struggle and dodge and queue. So, that juxtaposition there, it's telling us how things are really different at night, but also how they still have a sense of being able to enjoy themselves and relax even though they are at war. The next thing that's really interesting is like the black shapes impossible to mark. So, that's a reference to the war that's going on because of course as we saw in the previous stanza they're like dodging snipers all the time. So that's

telling us they're black shapes, you can't identify them because it's so dark and snipers can't get at you. So there's safety there, which is interesting of course because typically what does black symbolize? Evil, darkness and and scaringness and you know, all the bogeymen come out at night. Whereas light is your hope, is your goodness. So what this poem is also really interestingly playing with is that flipping because of course for them day is danger, night is safety. So it flips the images of darkness and light as well. Black shapes impossible to mark is actually creating connotations of safety here where usually in a poem black shapes impossible to mark, that's some like that's some scary stuff.

Specifically they're impossible to mark as Muslim, Serb or Croat. Now that's interesting because he's provided a tricolon there of three of the different ethnicities that are caught up in this civil war. And those ethnicities symbolize the political root of the war. This war is being caused by essentially our obsession as human beings with labels, with with naming ourselves Muslim, Serb, Croat and so on. And that's really brilliantly juxtaposed against black shapes, something that's completely vague and indistinguishable. So it's showing how in this darkness we're instead having to focus just on us as human beings, on our humanity because we can't apply those political labels, religious labels, ethnic labels to one

another. And that idea is then continued in the next two lines. Three different languages are symbolic of the different cultures and the fact that you can't tell anymore, it's all just bread. And bread in this poem serves as a motif. Now, a motif is a repeated image or symbol. So, we're going to keep seeing bread. This is our second time of seeing bread. Oh, sorry. I'm This is our second time of seeing bread in this poem. In the first stanza, we had like, you know, they're getting their rationed bread. Now, it's about who calls bread what. So, what we're seeing here is, you know, that bread being used to represent what matters to us in society. And so, bread is something that everybody has, everybody needs. It's like a core thing.

What we have in this stanza is the focus is on just the bread and not our name for it. So, the focus is on what matters, not the unimportant labels we attach to it, the language, the names, the whatever that we attach to it. So, yeah. So, this stanza is really full of that interesting contrast between the day and the night. It's really atypical for poems. It's really changing the common symbols that you get with light and dark. You also have that continued a couple lines down when we have no torches guide them. So, of course, there's a double instinct double instinct. Sorry. There's a double meaning behind no torches guide them. First of all, there's just the literal definition. Literally, nobody's got

torches. I'm indicating medieval torch here, modern torch. I can't do this with my hands. No one's got torches because, of course, they don't want light. They don't want light to identify them cuz that means danger. So, no torches guide them. Literally, nobody has any lights to help see their way because they need it to be dark. On the other hand, we can also take that more as like a metaphor, right? Everybody's just out walking. They don't need a man-made construct like a torch to guide them. It's just very natural. And that fits with the way that line continues. They don't collide. So, it's this idea of we can naturally find our way around one another. We can naturally move with one another in

natural human instinct. Except, of course, when we deliberately collide for the purpose of a flirtatious ploy when a girl's dark shape is fancied by a boy. The thing I want to say about that is that we start to have a semantic field of romance. Now, it starts here and continues massively into our next stanza. But, our beginning of our semantic field of romance that we get here is with words like flirtatious, fancied. As well as that semantic field of romance, you've also got a really interesting mode of address going on. Girl and boy. They're hypernyms of young. So, a hypernym is like the more specific words of young people. Specifically, the young females are called girls and the young males are

called boys. It's like the more specific wording rather than young. So, it is still continuing though those same connotations by calling them girl and boy rather than like woman and man. It's those connotations of innocence, of the future potential, um of youth going on there. I also really like the fact that the language is really vague. It's just girl and boy. There's no specific names given to them. So, it gives the poem a universality to it. Now, that's really important when we consider that this poem is trying to make a comment about a large group of people. And it's really trying to make us focus on our humanity, our what unifies us as human beings. And so, it's not making this poem unique or

special to a particular person in a particular instance. Actually, there is a universality in just any girl being fancied by any boy as is our natural instinct as human beings, our natural instinct. We don't need torches. We just know how to love, how to fancy, how to, you know, want each other, care about each other. So, overall, by the end of this stanza, what you get is from the volta that we had at the end of the first stanza, is we start to see what the change is. And of course, the change is day is danger, whereas night time is safety, it's sexiness, if anything. It's romance, because it's an opportunity to be together. And also, we get the shift away from war to a focus on us as people

and our humanity, as well. Onto our next stanza, and this one is really short. So, I'm going to come back to that in a minute, because that's something that we want to analyze. The actual first structural point I want to highlight is our rhyme scheme. Now, I referred to this a little bit earlier with the iambic pentameter, as well, but I want to talk about it mainly here, because the way you would analyze it is linked to the idea of love, and that's what we see heightened in this stanza. There is a constant rhyme scheme throughout the poem. You've got a constant rhyme scheme of AA BB CC DD. That means the lines right after each other rhyme. They are known as rhyming couplets. And guess what type of poetry classically uses

rhyming couplets? Love poems. So, that combination of iambic pentameter, the classic rhythm of the heart, and rhyming couplets, two lines constantly united together, and all that kind of stuff. The structure of the poem is just oozing classic love poetry. But, obviously, the content of the poem, war, destruction, hardship, and if we are analyzing this poem as having stanzas, we've also got inconsistent stanza length. Like, look how short this stanza is compared to the first one we had. The reason I like to analyze this poem as having stanzas is because what you can analyze is that the conflict between the consistent rhyme scheme and the consistent rhythm and the connotations of love that they create

completely conflict against the content to do with war, but also the inconsistent stanza length. Almost like it's reflecting the conflicting experience of our Sarajevans. That conflict conflicting experience between the persistence of love and caring for one another and humanity against war, you never know what's going to happen, things are constantly changing, nothing's kind of settled. I think that is a really brilliant part of what he does. We get again more of that conflicting in the semantic fields here. So, I already told you about the semantic field of love and romance that carries on here. Got tender, checking in our eyes, the signals and the tone of voice, all this kind of stuff to do with

like flirting and romance and blah blah blah. But, what you've also got here is military language as well. You've got language like radar, signal. And isn't that just such a brilliant way of pointing out the conflict of what they're experiencing, the conflict of the love we experience for one another as humans, but also we can't ever really get away from the war that we are surrounded by as well. War is everywhere. You can't really get away from it. Like it's influencing everything including our kind of tender romantic moments. And by the way, that is why I think this stanza is shorter than the others because it is supposed to be like a tender romantic snapshot where we're really just There's such a

closeness and proximity to them, isn't there? It's all voices and eyes and Oh, there's just such an intimacy in the imagery here. So, I think that's part of why it's so short. It's like we're zooming in to our lovers for a moment before we kind of step back out to the wider what's going on all around them. There's also an interesting question with this juxtaposition between military language and romantic language, a metaphorical meaning behind it that maybe love is a weapon, too. So, love is part of this war. Love is part of how humans are fighting, but we're fighting for each other and fighting for ourselves because of us loving each other. We've also got in this stanza a continuation of the light imagery. Okay,

so as well as bread, light and dark are also motives in this poem. They're repeated images or symbols. And of course, here it's in the match or the lighter. So, it's like the little like spark of hope and joy that they are having in this moment together. The love and the hope of young people flirting with one another. Our next stanza is bleeding huge. And again, I have a rogue arrow that is going to gain meaning later on. But talking about this one, this is our penultimate stanza now. We've come back to a kind of wider scale. We've shifted to a different couple. I see a pair who certainly progressed. And we have a continuation on now with that personal pronoun of I, making it feel like an eyewitness

account. So, you remember how we said before about how it feels like the speaker is telling us about the Bosnian War and what they were going through. This is fitting with that. This is fitting with that sense of it being an account of it being told about you know, the reality of what he's seeing. And the reality of what he's seeing is yes, absolutely devastation and hardship, but also human beings loving and persevering through that. And I think this stanza is where he really hammers that message home. First of all, I really like the uh description of taking her hand and leading away from where they stand on two shells scars. Now, that personification of the being like scars it is a metaphor for that permanent

impact of the war and the impact that it's having. And of course, again the juxtaposition between the romantic couple standing on shells scars as well. You know, that constant bond and link between people and the war they're experiencing and they can't get away from either one. And throughout this stanza, you get that. You get this romantic and violent imagery being juxtaposed. And it's as I said, similar in the last stanza, it's that conflict between war and then normal conventional life as well. We also again have our motif of bread going on, but this time the bread has been destroyed. So, Sir Mortar's massacred the bread shop queue and blood crusts of shredded bread. Shredded bread lay on this pavement with

the broken dead. A really graphic and horrible image because on the one hand you've got that bread that symbolizes, you know, just basic normal life. And of course it's destroyed, which is a metaphor for how their normal lives were destroyed. And there's also in this image the closest juxtaposition we get between that war and normal life with the blood dunked crusts of bread. Because of course, the blood is, the violence of war, the the danger and death and destruction of war. But then the crusts of bread, that basic normal life. It's really bringing the two really tightly together there. And this is the closest it's been together. There's also a really interesting shrumamorphisim in that line. So, shrumamorphisim

shrumamorphisim is a a meta- type of metaphor where people or animals are given the qualities of an object. So, that image of the broken dead. Now, I think there's a couple ways of interpreting this. First of all is the shrumamorphisim because it highlights the severity of the violence because their bodies have been blown to bits. That's the like the more literal meaning. The mortar shell has just blown people apart. But then the shrumamorphisim is also conveying that sense of them losing humanity because that's what happens in a war. We stop seeing each other as people and so it's it's almost dehumanizing them as well. Another potential interpretation there, if we think of broken in its more

metaphorical meaning of like, you know, broken heart or broken spirit, it's that sense of trying to break people, break the sari evens, which of course are a mortar shell is trying to do as well. Just really trying to destroy these people. I think it's also interesting that you've got that alliteration with the M's of mortars massacred. And you get it as well, they're a little bit further apart, but you get those words repeated um later on, too, with the mortar and the massacre. And I think that alliteration between the two is important in conveying the responsibility of war, mortar, in causing the death, massacre. Massacre also So, the word massacre means like killing a lot of people in a really

horrible way, a really violent way. And so, by using massacred, it is really that sense of condemnation as well, of reminding us of the the level of violence, the severity of the violence. You've then got a re- return um away from that 1992 image back to our lovers in the present. And their feet in holes made by the mortar that caused the massacre. So, now you've got the physical juxtaposition. They are literally in it, quite literally in the war. They are in the history of their city. Because of course, that is what the holes made by the mortar that caused the massacre now represent. They represent the hardship and the suffering that people have gone through in the past. And they are standing in that,

fancying each other. I I I want to say being in love, but you know, they're they're at least progressing beyond flirtation or whatever stage they are, whichever baseball base they have reached. It's like they're standing in a history of pain and suffering and loving each other and liking each other, that, which I think is a really powerful and beautiful image. Again, on that idea of despite all the horrors of the world, and the horrors that humans can inflict on one another, we also have a great capacity to persevere through that, and to just love each other love each other, too. And in terms of the poet's decision to make it rain, uh not that kind of making it rain. So, the first is about like the mundanity of weather. So, it's

just been raining all day. It's just I don't know, life is just normal and plain and and dull. Is that what it's about? Or is it about creating a sad tone with, you know, that pathetic fallacy of rain, where it's, you know, the sadness that the people feel with everything that's happened, because that would really heighten the sadness we as the reader are feeling after reading about our blood-drunk cross of shredded bread, as well. That's the other thing, it's half the day. Almost like that implication of it being during the day it's been raining, and now it's all clear. Um so, perhaps it's that, you know, day is being filled with sadness kind of thing, so it's creating that sad tone. But, we also have that pathetic

fallacy continue for a different mean. Though, now now that it's night time, the even the smallest clouds have cleared away, leaving the Sarajevo star-filled evening sky. So, there we've actually got pathetic fallacy of hope, right? Because you've got a clear sky, opportunity, freedom, no problems. But, also star-filled evening sky star-filled evening sky. Think about that, the classic metaphors to do with stars, you know? You're shooting for the stars, aim for the sky. It's all about like reaching heights, reaching success, reaching opportunities. So, there is a sense of hope coming from that, and it being star-filled, those bright lights again, coming back to the title. Flipping that typical image of dark and

light, where here actually the darkness is what allows you to focus on that kind of opportunity, and the happiness, and the joy, and the hope. Whereas during our day when it rained all day, you know, it's all sad and miserable. However, we are not allowed to live in that hope for very long at all because it's immediately juxtaposed with the line in ideally bright and clear for the bomber's eye. So again, light is immediately flipped on its head as an image and given those dangerous connotations because it's bright and clear for the bomber. And oh my goodness, I forgot another apostrophe. The English teachers are going to come for my head. So by having that juxtaposition so quickly after just

having had this much more hopeful tone. Oh, he he's wrenching at our heart, Tony Harrison, because it's like just as things are starting to feel happy again. The smallest clouds have cleared away. The star-filled evening sky, ideally bright and clear for a bomber's eye. Like he just flips it. He just twists it into such an unhappy, dangerous image. It's like you can never feel complete hope. You can never feel complete safety because light equals danger. Light equals war as is the case here with this bomber's eye. The next bit I want to talk about is the metaphor that continues with these stars. So basically what's happening is our shells, the holes created by the shells, are filled with water. So our evening sky is being

reflected into that and our boy is looking down at it. So he's seeing the sky via a reflection in the water that he's standing in. And it's described as him seeing fragments of the splintered Pleiades. We go back. So Pleiades are a star constellation of stars. And so if we again think about the typical classic metaphorical meanings of stars, it's about like, you know, destiny and the future. And so, our boy looking at them, he could also be a symbol and a metaphor. He could be a symbol of like the outlook of the youth. How are they viewing the future? And so, the fact that his vision of these stars is fragments and splinter, that sense of like brittleness, it's not complete. And the fact that he's seeing that in the

holes created by war could all serve as a metaphor for that real struggle for hope, right? Because it's like the hope is there, the stars, but it's been fractured, splintered, it's been broken up by the war, by the devastation that is all around them. So, I think it's a could be a really powerful metaphor for that struggle for hope that they're going through. Those great plosives that you've got. So, plosives are um the sounds This is I'm not going to get too technical on what like your tongue has to be doing, but it's basically the sounds created by the letters b, d, g. You hear that kind of similarity of b, b, b, b. And we have that in this line here, death-deep, death-dark wells. So, those plosives add to that depth of the

holes created. And that is part of that metaphor for the struggle to hope for hope as well, because it's like they are so deep and so filled with death that it's it's so hard to see the hope. There is It's like the depth is a metaphor for the the level of damage that the war has created. There's a deep damage here. And that repetition of death as well really reinforces um the the fatal damage that this war has caused for our Sarajevans. One stanza left, and it's another short one as we uh return to focusing on our like little couple again. So, the return to darkness with the dark boy-shaped dark girl-shaped, there's also, you know, those protective connotations because we've had that image of darkness swapped now. Darkness

is safety. Darkness is concealing. And that's also reflected in the actual action the boy is taking, leading her away, leading her to safety, perhaps, um as well, of course, as well as taking her out on a date, as we're told as well, with the candlelit cafe. There's also in that action of what he's doing of leading the girl away. Is it perhaps symbolic of the war's impact? Like, they feel the need to escape, to try and get away from everything as well. You know, like, are there double meanings in how we can read leading the girl away? Yes, it's taking her away on a date. Yes, it's leading her away to, you know, and a further develop their romantic relationship with one another. Um but, is it also perhaps that symbol of of the

war? Like, they're trying to get away from it all, trying to get away from the destruction, trying to get away from those Serb mortar shells they're standing in to something a bit different. This, of course, is our last stanza, so it's also really important that we analyze this from a structural perspective as being the end, the privileged position of being at the end, and those final messages, those final ideas that we have. And what's interesting about this one is that it continues to end on, you know, the intermingling. It continues to end on the um mix of love and war. But, there is a little bit more focus, I would say, on the safety and the love. We do still have the war because, of course, there's

first of all that double meaning, are they trying to like get away from painful memories, are they trying to get away from the war? But, then you also have the uplifting tone created by that image and that alliteration in coffee in a candlelit cafe until the curfew. It's like, you know, happy that they're they're going to get away and have this romantic moment together. But, then there's also the fact that the continuation of the alliteration happens on the next line with curfew. Doesn't quite fit. Jars a little bit. Like it's not neatly in the same line as all the others. And of course, the curfew is because of the war. So it's alliterative with the romantic moment, coffee, candlelit cafe, curfew. But it's not on

the same line and it doesn't like it's there's a bit of a shift in tone there because of course it's it's war again. And there's also the fact that there's a double meaning in that line because yes, there's a candlelit cafe that is very romantic atmosphere, but also they don't have any light because of what's going on in the war. Oh, they're sharing one coffee, very romantic, very sweet. Or they can only afford one coffee or resources are so scarce they can only get one coffee. So there's this constant intermingling now between war and love, war and love, war and love. Like the two are just tied up. You can't like when you're in this war, you can never escape it. Its influence is everywhere even

when you're trying to love someone. We also still get our bread motif. So as well as the light motif continuing, as well as the intermingling of love and war continuing, the bread continues too. This time the bread is actually gone. Instead, it's the flower sacks that it's referred to as and they are completely refilled with sand. So if we think about what our bread has gone through, it started in a hole, then it was shredded, now it's flower sacks and the actual bread itself isn't even there anymore. So it's been disintegrating as the poem goes on. So there's now if we think of bread as being our symbol of like normal life, the fact that the bread is now gone and it's just replaced with sand.

So it's being used for a war purpose now. It's like safety is completely gone. There's a complete lack of normalcy. And that is the very last line of the poem. The very last line of the poem is the complete lack of normalcy is it is an image of war. Is the key message here? Yes, love perseveres. Yes, we keep loving, but no matter what, we just we can't get away from the war.