what does the Stanza address (Refugee Blue)
Answers
Explanation:
The speaker begins this poem by suggesting that there are 10 million people in “this city”. He tells the listener, someone, he loves, that despite this there is nowhere for them to live. He reminisces on the past, the life they used to have, and the safety of their old home. But, things have changed and new demands and policies made by Nazi Germany are forcing the speaker and his family out of the country.
The speaker also traces the various times he sought out help or tried to understand what was going on and was met with hatred and fear. There is no one who cares about the plight of this Jewish man and his family. The poem ends on a haunting note with the speaker painting an image of a big field in which ten thousand soldiers marched, looking for them.
Themes
There are several important themes that a reader should consider in ‘Refugee Blues’. These include anti-semitism, isolation/loneliness, and exile. The first, anti-semitism, is one of the factors in this poem that results in the other themes. It is due to the policies of Nazi Germany that the speaker in this poem and his family were forced to flee the country. But, unfortunately, many of the countries that Jewish refugees escaped to were unwilling to accept them in the numbers they were arriving in