25/5 Home-Based Learning Task 1

The poem "Children in the Darkness" was written in the year 2009, during Christmas by Henry M Bechtold when he was in his hotel room during his stay at Saigon. The poet was inspired by the photo of a young boy carrying an automatic rifle going to war in the news. The poet was actually planning to write a poem about girls that are being ill- treated by men when they work in the park. But he wrote another poem, Children in the darkness. The conflict is that young boys are going to war instead of young men and sacrificing their future, and are unable to fight for theirs lives. At such a young age, they are so innocent, yet they have to be subjected to such treatment. It is said that there are over millions of children that have been used in the war or dragged into with their parents. They are usually used as nurses, spies. They are in charge if guarding resources, general camps, drumboys, and worst of all, infantries soldiers who are put at the front line to test out for enemy mines. Children are treated as nearly useless people in the war. They are given high risks task as they are of low value, and are low-skilled. Those children do not have the opportunity to study, to grow up to be inteligent and have a bright future. They have not a single chance, no one spares a thought for them, they cannot learn, but only get consumed by war, and their lives are wasted just like that.



"There are children in the darkness

Who have not seen the light

There are children in the darkness

Who someone will teach to fight



Chalk and blackboards will not be

To this door there is no key

From this life they can not flee

And these children are not free



Could we simply light a candle

Could we give them half a chance

Could we teach them how to read

Could we teach them how to dance



Or will a war consume them

Their body and their soul

Will their life and blood be poured

Down some endless thirsty hole



Back into the darkness

From which there is no flight

Back into the darkness

Into which there shines no light

"


http://www.scribd.com/doc/31962195/Children-in-the-Darkness#