"After I no longer speak”; A Message on the Impact of the Holocaust in "Shooting Stars" Carol Ann Duffy 10th Grade

Humans inflict suffering on other humans and when events are forgotten, they are repeated. In the poem “Shooting Stars," Carol Ann Duffy tells a shocking story of a female prisoner held by Nazis in a concentration camp around the time of the Holocaust. This is a poem in which human suffering is being actively portrayed. Duffy uses a cryptic title together with effective imagery which explores the theme of human suffering. General connotation applied to the phrase “Shooting Stars” is that a star is falling or the beauty and brightness of fireworks representing women of the holocaust.

‘Shooting Stars’ is written in the perspective of a Jewish woman who was killed during the Holocaust. The woman speaks to another woman about the atrocities they had endured as Jewish people, and how despite all hardships, faith still remains. Structurally, the poem is in uniform. It has a title followed by six stanzas of four lines . The poem is also placed in the exact center of the page which may express the uniformity of the war. Immediately establishing darkness and horror in stanza one, Duffy begins the poem with “After I no longer speak.” This sets the readers off with a strong image of silence and death followed by even more horror, “they...