The Northern Ireland Question

chunwaihung
Member since Apr-6-04
69 posts
Jun-19-04, 09:00 AM (PST)
Click to EMail chunwaihung Click to send private message to chunwaihung Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
7. "RE: The Northern Ireland Question"
In response to message #0
 
 
   The poem "THe Northern Ireland Question" has the longest poem name(4 words) out of the poem assigned, but it is the shortest in length (4 lines). Some classmates found the poem impressive, and they did some "research" on the poem.

For me, I am just going to do some "search" in google.com. Honestly, I am neither impressed by the poem, nor I totally understand the poem after the search. The idea I got was there are conflicts between Britain and Ireland constantly. The poem may has to do with the terrorism there in Ireland. I am not too familiar with such problem. Questions after the poem like "Who are the players?" "What is the poem's resolution?" are too hard for me to answer, and I am not going to make up an answer that I am not sure.

Intersting enough, this poem is on page "444", and "4" is considered bad luck in chinese just like "13" in English. This is because in chinese, "4" has similar sound as "death". This poem talks about two girls being blown up to "become" scattered fingers (444), and it is on page "dead dead dead". Quite an interesting coincident.

chunwaihung
Member since Apr-6-04
80 posts
Jun-19-04, 09:11 AM (PST)
Click to EMail chunwaihung Click to send private message to chunwaihung Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
12. "RE: The Northern Ireland Question"
In response to message #0
 
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jun-19-04 AT 09:15 AM (PST)
 
"The Northern Ireland Question" is a very short (4 lines) poem, which described two innocent girls playing tig(game)near a car in the first two lines.

The last two lines, or all of the rest of the poem, asked the important "The Northern Ireland Question" - "how many counties would you say are worth their scattered fingers?" (444)

This is not a question that expected an answer, because there oughts to have no answers. No one wants to kill two innocent girls like those in the poem, but the poem also suggested that there are people who are planning to do such thing. If there are someone who planned to place a bomb (probably under the car), that situation must either be a terrorism or a war.

I agree with yu-ching, but I disagree with Jennifer. I don't think it has to do with the tig in the poem. The tig is just a game that tells us those two wee (little) girls were having fun. I believe, as yu-ching mentioned, it is the bomb that is not mentioned in the poem that makes the car dangerous. At the end of the second line, there are three dots ("...", page 444) after the word "car"(444). This suggested the car has something "funny" about it, probably the car has a deadly bomb underneath it.