The poem Living had been written by Jason Shinder(1955-2008), an American poet born in

Brooklyn. In this poet there are highlighted three characters by Jason, the poetic persona or

dramatic monologue which represents the whole situation, his mother who was ill and her sister

who was taking care of their mother. In this poem the writer used first person

In the poem, the writer described the situation of his mother and it is clear that his mother was

sick and fighting with her pain. It was the final stage where the medication was also painful and

she couldn’t absorb the pain of her medication. In this situation the sister of writer started

rubbing her mother’s feet to make her feel comfort. At this moment this treatment was more

effective than medication. Then the writer started giving the description of his mother’s feet. Her

feet was scratchy and skin was hard, yellow and dirt cramped beneath the broken nails. Which

indicates that she couldn’t work on het feet for a long time. The human touch of her daughter on

her feet couldn’t give her physical relieve but it gave her a mental relief that maybe she is not

living long but she is not dying alone. She was dying with a sort of relief and comfort with the

loved one by her bedside.

In the poet living , there are some literary terms or devices are noticeable. The lines of the poet is

end- stopped line. The lines of the poem has a conclusion at the end. For Example: “as if with a

kind of relief that doesn’t relieve.” In this sentence the speaker ended with a conclusion.

Secondly we can find another literary device called Dramatic monologue in the poem. Dramatic

monologue is when the speaker talks to himself. In this poem the speaker only talked to himself.

Which means there were not conversation the other characters. There were conversation of his

mother and sister.

Third literary term is Image. The writer had successfully created an image of the whole scenario.

We can easily visualize the situation by reading the poem. For Example:

“ my sister, in silence, stood at the end

of the bed and slowly rubbed her feet,

which were scratchy with hard, yellow skin,

and dirt cramped beneath the broken nails, ”

In those sentences we can understand the situation that sister is rubbing the feet of her mother.

The skin of mothers feet were scratchy with hard, yellow skin,and dirt cramped beneath the

broken nails.

Anaphora is another literary device which is used in the poem. Anaphora is used where repeating

sequence of the word used. In the second line “ one more needle , one more insane orange pill”.

By using One more twice the anaphora occurred.

Another literary device called Tactile or touch also used in the poem. It is basically used to

explain the sensation of like textures, temperature etc. In thus poem the writer explained the

texture of is mothers skin of legs and the spiritual comfort that her daughter rubbing her legs.

And final literary device is sounds. It is basically used to create a dramatic feel in a poem. For

Example:“in silence” and “her voice suddenly seemed low” can be defined as sounds which gave

a dramatic feel in the poem.

The word Ethnic comes from a Greek word ethnos which means nation. But in the present this
word is used to refer some group of peoples who are holding distinctive culture from the general
peoples of a country or territory. Those ethnic peoples and the generals are similar in terms of
nationality but there are a big difference in terms of cast, culture, tradition and religion. In
Bangladesh, there are more than 45 retail of ethnic groups in Bangladesh. Majority of those
ethnic groups are from Chittagong hill track and the rest of them live in Sylhet, Moulavi Bazar,
Patuakhali and a few live in Jessore. They have own society and lifestyle. The lifestyle tradition
cultures of the ethnic communities of Bangladesh are given below.