Question

What price did the six people paid in the poem "The Cold Within" and why?

Answer 1

In Kinney’s poem the six people, who gathered around the burning fire, represent those with discriminatory attitude towards others over petty barriers like colour, race, religious faith, class, caste, gender and ethnicity.

To be precise, among the ‘six humans’ in the poem, two were with two different colours — White and Black (the first woman and the fifth man), two were with different social classes — the poor and the rich (third and fourth), the second man was a bigot and the last man was selfish and opportunistic. These differences among them are symbolic of the discrimination present among us — the entire human race.