Learner Portfolio “It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers” Re ection 8/17

“Each time I hit a key on my electric typewriter, speaking of peaceful trees another village explodes.”

With each stanza, I grew more and more confused about the identity of the
speaker. Ideas uctuated through my head and it wasn’t until the last sentence I
was able to connect the body to the title and realize they were not a normal
civilian nor an American Hero. In terms of their perspective, I infer they feel both
guilt and shame knowing that while they document the terrors of Vietnam, lives
are lost as they remain in the comfort of their desk. I feel the poem as a whole is
a representation of all Americans at that time with the mentality of, “I reach out in
love, my hands are guns…”. This demonstrates how America believed they were
providing support by joining the war, but in reality, they had no business sending
soldiers to a war they weren’t ghting. Now as I understand the speaker’s career,
I imagine the title was chosen to emphasize how ignorance is bliss. As a child,
the speaker lived peacefully despite the horrors they were growing up in. As a
now literate adult, they see the world for all it is. They feel it’s more bene cial to
ignore the news being presented to them, than realize for the wrong-doings of
their society.