1. The speaker of this poem is a woman speaking of
what she remembers of the evacuation of JapaneseCanadians when she was six years old. The speaker
is likely a girl because she remembered that “[she]
missed her dolls”. Girls usually play with dolls rather
than young boys. The speaker states her age when
she says “[she] remember[s] the mountains and
[she] was six years old”.
2. Tone is the attitude conveyed by the speaker. The
speaker’s tone is reflective and sad. The speaker is
reflecting on what she went through during the
evacuation and is sad because it was very hard on
her and her family. “What I do I remember of the
evacuation” reveals that she is reflecting and the fact
that she prayed to God “that [she] might be white” is
very sad because it proves how awful people must
have been to her which probably made her life very
hard. (mournful, dejected, disheartened,
melancholic)
3. An example of repetition in the poem is “What do I
remember of the evacuation?”. The speaker repeats
this to give some focus to the flurry of traumatic
memories that she begins to recall. The memories
move from those of a six year-old’s innocence to this
young girl slowly becoming aware of the world’s
prejudice.
4. “herded like cattle” – magnitude of evacuation
and/or being treated like animals
“her parents were careful not to bruise her with
bitterness” –
5. This poem is a lyrical free verse because it expresses
personal thoughts and emotions and it does not
follow a set rhyme scheme or rhythm. It does not
follow an “ABAB” or “ABCB” pattern and the only
rhyme is at the end where “sight” and “white”
rhyme. The poem is also not broken up into distinct
stanzas.
6. Mood is the way the poem makes the reader feel.
The mood of the poem is pity and despair. We pity
the child who has to leave home and flee and we
feel for her anguish. Often the tone and the mood
of a poem are closely linked. In this case, the
speaker’s melancholy over this traumatic incident
causes the reader to pity her situation and feel
disappointed at the government’s reaction this
perceived “threat”.
7. The theme of this poem is that the internment of
Japanese-Canadians during WW II was a
traumatizing event for these people. Racial
discrimination caused immense pain and suffering to
Japanese-Canadians and this is truly a sad chapter in
Canada’s history.