This post contains my analysis of ‘A helping hand’ by Miroslav Holub with visuals capturing the descriptive imagery in the poem. I also wrote a poem using the technique of transformative along with visuals for the descriptive imagery in my poem.
Poem from packet:
Paragraph:
‘A helping hand’ analysis
With the poem ‘A helping hand’ Miroslav Holub uses irony to compare how we as society are quick to help and do things that will later benefit ourselves but hesitates to help other people that we will not profit from. So, we have the ability to do amazing things. But we don’t when it comes to certain people, people who we cannot profit from.
In the beginning the poet shows how humans have turned “grass…into corn” (1,2) which is implying to the agriculture revolution and how humans used science to achieve those things. Then later mentions how we also “gave a helping hand to fire and it turned into a rocket” (3,4) which implies to the industrial revolution. “We gave a helping hand” repeats throughout the poem, it represents how we are doing things that benefit others. But those do not profit everyone and only helps a few people. In those first four lines the poet demonstrates how we are capable of helping and celebrates the human progress throughout time and with the punctuation, it emphasizes the ends of each line. It reveals the human capacity to change our environment.
Then as the poem goes on with the lines: “Hesitatingly, cautiously,” (5,6) the mood of the poem shifts and shows how society acts with helping other people. We act after thinking carefully and we do not help right away. The “some people” (9) indicates to more privileged people and the ones who do not get help from it are the poor, people who comes from a different religion or has a different skin colour. For example, with the situation going on in Ukraine, people are showing support and are more aware of it versus the problem occurring in Sudan, since people are not aware of the problems they have there, the people there are not getting help. We are also capable to stop world hunger, poverty, or climate change, it is just that we choose not to. The poem shows the reality of how our world is like. With the ellipsis added at the end of the line, the poet hints to the audience to think about who those “some people” may be.
We as society are capable of helping everyone and do amazing things but most people choose not to do so just because it would not benefit them later, and so not everyone is helped. The ones that really need help are not getting much help and people who already have much more than what they need, still profit from others.
Transformative poem:
Ai picture from Night café
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