How Ratushinskaya Depicts Her Suffering

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How Ratushinskaya Depicts Her Suffering

Irina Georgina Ratushinskaya was born in Odessa, Ukraine on the 4th

march 1954. She grew up in Soviet Russia and came in conflict with it

at an early age unable to adapt to the lack of freedom. Ratushinskaya

spent many years of her life in soviet labour camps for the

manufacture and dissemination of her poems. Although Irina

Ratushinskaya suffered beatings, force feeding and solitary

confinement in brutal, freezing conditions. She never stopped

believing that what she was doing was right. Irina Ratushinskaya had

read western books which threatened the soviet regime because it

showed a more accurate picture of history than what Russian books

portrayed.

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She once said that

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"The calling of a true poet is to speak the truth even though it may

not be a subjective truth"

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This shows her determination to survive the regime. She never allowed

the regime to stop her writing poetry.

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Her poetry tells us the suffering she went through in the labour

camps, but also how the regime could never bring her to defeat. Two

examples of her poetry which show this well are "I will live and

survive" and "I will travel through the land". Both poems are

different as they explain different aspects of being in a labour camp,

however they both show the same themes and issues. In "I will live and

survive" she is explaining the physical torture she went through and

in "I...

... middle of paper ...

...had a companion

and that it is the most ancient of traditions even though words cannot

be ancient. This is a good use of metaphorical techniques.

The tone of the poem is very serious and uses a semantic field of

words which depict violence and which overload you with inhumane

images.

Overall throughout both poems Irina Ratushinskaya shows the harshness

and heart aches in the camps. In "I will travel through the land" it

is the mental suffering and how she misses her family, which is

depicted. It is the physical suffering that is described in "I will

live and survive". Although they talk about different aspects of life

in the camps they give us as readers an insight. Her determination and

persistence to fight the regime plays a big part in both poems giving

the reader hope that this type of regime can be beaten.

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