Sonnet ("My father fought...")

Summary of the poem- Sonnet ("My father fought") by Yehuda Amichai

1. My father fought A presentation by Lijo G eorge

2. Author: Yehuda Amichai He is one of the most celebrated modern poets of Israel. His poems in Hebrew have been translated into forty languages. He fought 3 wars which include the Arab-Israeli war, Sinai war, and the Yom Kippur War. The horrors of those war are depicted in most of his work. It was during the war that Amichai began to be interested in poetry.

3. Yahuda Amichais father : solider. He participated in the first world war on behalf of Germans about four years. He is very much concerning about his child. Yahuda Amichais mother : she who gave hardening cake to his husband. Soldiers : who fought and sacrificed their life for the sake of others. Yahuda Amichai : he participated in the second world war. He joined British army on behalf of jews people, against Hitler.

4. Sonnet ("My father fought...") Four years my father fought that war of theirs, And did not love or hate his enemies. But I know he was forming me, even there, Day by day, out of his tranquilities, The precious few tranquilities he gleaned Between the smoke and bombs for a child's sake And put them in the knapsack tattered at the seams, With leftovers of mother's hardening cake. He gathered with his eyes the nameless dead, The numerous dead for my sake unforsaken, So that I should not die like them in dread, But love them, seeing them as once he saw. He filled his eyes with them; he was mistaken. Like them, I must go out to meet my war.

5. Summary Yahuda Amichai starts this poem by saying about his Father. His father was a solider and he participated in the I world war on behalf of Germans. In the first line we can see that the war is rightly described as “theirs” . Because yahuda amichai says that his father did not love or hate his enemies. He just participated in the war as a duty entrusted to him. The reason is given by Yahuda Amichai is that his fathers aim was not to destroy others or engage in war but his only intention was to form his little child and he did that day by day out of his self-possession.

6. 2. His father possessed some precious possessions. how he gained? By working in the battle field between the smoke and bombs. As a soldier he carries all these things in his backpack. the cake given by his wife is also kept in the bag. Now his condition is so poor, though he is not like to fought against others, he do so for his child’s betterment.

7. 3 Many people died in the first world war. They are become nameless people. Yahuda says, many people were forsaken their own life for the unforsaken and sake of others. They died with fear so Yahuda Amichai says, that he will not die as them in fear. They died for the nation, but they were mistaken because now this nation is trying to destroy Jews people. So he says, that he must go out to meet his war. Thus later Amichai himself volunteered and fought in WWII in the British army as a member of the Jewish Brigade and then as a commando, on which note the poem abruptly ends.

8. Content The poem is understatedly tragic, as many of Amichai’s poems are. The father had hoped to give his son wisdom, the understanding that all human beings are in some sense to be loved- a love which his son was to experience by seeing through his father’s gaze.

9. In the logic of the poem, though, the son will not be able to develop an understanding like that of his father in the war he goes to. His father could only do because he fought in someone else’s war, a war in which he could afford to see his enemy combatants(fighter) in a detached way. The son, now fighting a war of his own, will be forced to have a different perspective. As the people on whose side the father fought saw the war as their own and thus could not achieve the perspective the father did, so the son now in a war for his own people will presumably not be able to develop such a wisdom. He will also not be able to impart it to his own children. The wisdom and worldview of his forbears are dead, collateral damage in the cause of a people’s nationhood.

10. Literary devices: Rhyming words : Sake and cake were used in the second stanza Dead and dread were used in the third stanza.     2. Paradox : It is used in the first stanza that is- He did not love or hate his enemies.