1. In the poem “Eastern War Time,” Adrienne Rich portrays a lot of vivid scenes about different people. Which one do you think is the best representation of the war images? And, how are these descriptions of other people, such as the driving woman of sixty, related to the main character, the Jewish girl?

In the poem “Eastern War Time,” Adrienne Rich portrays a lot of vivid scenes about different people. The image that stood out to me the most was when Rich describes the American Jewish girl in the beginning of the poem. Rich successfully creates an image in the reader’s mind of a girl who has been caught between school and home, and ignorant about the conflict in the rest of the world. In contrast, a Jewish girl in Germany around this time was probably fighting to survive the Holocaust. This image creates a juxtaposition of a Jewish girl in America and a Jewish girl in Germany. Furthermore, Rich moves on to describe a 60 year old woman. I strongly feel that this 60 year old woman is the American Jewish girl. Rich brilliantly shows the growth of the Jewish girl throughout her poem.