Luna And Where There's A Wall Analysis

Oppression In History

A common saying states “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”... yet one sees within history that people are oppressed and marginalized for arbitrary social identities and political reasons daily, so why does one choose the side of the oppressor all the time and never choose to make a difference? For example, one can see in Canadian history that Indigenous people — who were the first inhabitants of Canada — were taken from their own land and placed in unsustainable habitats through unfair land treaties with European settlers, and they were culturally assimilated through European efforts of residential schools amongst other things to become more like the average European

These examples of oppression are one of the many that showcase how thousands of lives have been obliterated in attempts for people to benefit from the desolation of segregating others, and the poems analyzed below demonstrate this explicitly. In the poems Luna and Where There’s A Wall by Wanda Marie John and Joy Kogawa, it is demonstrated that one should not oppress those different to them as it leads to psychological brutality and the unethical deprivation of basic human rights through the use of location and tropology.

Firstly, in the poem Luna by Wanda Marie John, it is shown that one must not segregate people who are different because it deprives them of their rights and causes psychological damage, through the use of the location described and connotation behind the words. Location is specifically used to show the animosity between the character and their habitat, and it helps create a vivid image of how the protagonist may feel. In the poem it states “She calls to her pod (John 2)”, which may indicate that the location of this poem is not permanent but is a detachable temporary unit like her pod. The poem also includes “She slaps the water... teardrops of the sea fall upon her shiny,

Location is used to showcase that oppression should not be practiced due to ethics because the physical aspects of the location in the poem demonstrate the lack of freedom and shelter that one was given past the wall, and how the oppression everyone went through caused them to either become violent or depressed. For example, in the poem it states “ There are zeppelins, helicopters, rockets, bombs, battering rams (Kogawa (15-17)” as well as “Bird to carry messages taped to their feet (Kogawa 26)”. These quotes from the poem show how the wall is a violent place possibly during war as warcraft is used like bombs, and it is also a sign of oppression as one has to communicate secretly in the location. The location is shown as mysterious, dangerous and very similar to a warzone, and this helps show how the inhabitants of the wall were living inhumane lives without proper basic needs met because of the alienation given. The poem also ends with the year “1970” at the very bottom, which could indicate that the poem was written in 1970, which could help support the theory that the wall in this poem is the Berlin Wall as it was in use at that time (Jeffrey). All throughout the location revealed, one can evidently see how unsustainable the