How Was Your Understanding of Cultural and Contextual Considerations in the Work Developed Through the Individual Oral?

Reflective Statement

How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations in the work developed through the individual oral?

The essence of time and place was important and well-integrated into many of Szymborka’s poems. Making use of these two elements to help her portray the themes and main ideas of her poems was one of her effective techniques to allow her readers to better understand and appreciate her perspectives. The social and cultural context in her life can also be noticed heavily in both her style and content of her poems.

One important time period which appears repeatedly in several of her poems is that of World War II (WWII). Szymborska wrote many poems on war, which is unsurprising since she experienced war first-hand during her childhood in the form of WWII. This experience gives her new insight and perspectives towards a very major thing like war which she shares with her readers through her poems. One such perspective is that of individuality in war. A common perspective from those who did not suffer through war is that numbers are everything, for example, how many people died. However, as emphasised in ‘’Starvation Camp in Jaslo”, we tend to group people up, often forgetting that one individual who also died in the war. This usage of war to portray the bigger themes of her poems such as the importance of individuality is a common way which she used to write many of her poems. Szymborska often describes the situation or context of the poem rather than a physical description of the setting. This always leaves many possible interpretations to her poems while managing to convey her point effectively. Growing up and living in Poland which went through communism during her time, Szymborska adopts a very practical and realistic outlook to the world. Since she witnesses the failure of communism in practice, even though it is a very effective idea on paper, she realises that the world is not ideal and everyone has to accept and she keeps a firm view on this throughout her poems. I am able to sense acceptance on her part that the human race together with the world is flawed and she chooses to embrace and work around it.