Explosion and Poem

Sometimes in life people face tragic experiences that haunts them for the rest of their lives. In "the minefields" by diane theils, a poem about a man who has been haunted by memories from his childhood and how it effected him in everything he did.

Theils used dark imagery and symbols to create a picture in the readers mind about a life changed forever. The poem argues that one traumatic incident can affect you and the people around you for the rest of your life. As the poem first begins it was told in second person. The poem first starts off by telling the story about two boys running from town to town trying to get home.Then one of the boys suggests to take a shortcut through the fields he knew of.

He said that there was lettuce growing in one of them and since they haven't eaten all day that would of been an advantage. His friend started running trough the field and as he looked back at his friend his body blew up and scattered across the field. In the first stanza the reader can learn that anything is unexpected and anything can happen at any given time. People have every day routines that they attain too, and one day when you decide to go a different way, you can get what you least expect.

The boys thought taking the shortcut would get them home faster but then the minefield exploded and the boys friend lost his life. Now that the boy is dead the other boy has to live with the burden of seeing his friend die because of one little change. In the second part of the poem the reader learns that the story is being told by the person's children. They say that their father told them the story one night during dinner and how they kept on eating after he was done.

After that it tells how the father was traumatized from that incident and how it affected his actions towards his children.The kids describe how everything he did related back to minefield incident. They said it was carried under his good intentions and how they heard it through his voice when he was angry and how they buried his bruises with sleeves from his anger. It shows that with the little things the man did his emotions came out in anger because of the minefield incident. The kids then express the way the minefield effected them, they say how even after years later and "continents away" how they expect anything to explode at any time like their father.

Then the last sentence in the poem ends with a twist. The kids say how that at any giving second their scared how they like their father might be left alone just standing there to re-cover by themselves. Throughout the poem the author uses different types of imagery so the reader can get an actual vision of the incident. In the first stanza the poet states that the boys friend was running fast as a wild rabbit.

With that image the reader can visualize that the boy was eager to run through the fields and how fast he was going.In the second stanza the the author uses metaphors and different examples to show the anger that the father had in him. It states that they saw the anger he carried from the way he threw anything. The reader can visualize someone just having so much anger and putting that force into their throw.

Then it says how once he threw a melon and opened like a head. In reference to that the reader can relate to the beginning and how it states about the explosion and the boy exploding and how the melon exploded. This poem gives out many different morals . .

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