Research Paper on:
Swirszczynska's A Conversation Through the Door

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
served as a military nurse in a makeshift hospital during the sixty-three-day Warsaw Uprising" (Anonymous Anna Swirszczynska (1909 - 1984) archive196.html). She eventually went on to become a poetess and  a childrens author, as well as a feminist. Interestingly enough, "She escaped execution and survived the war but was unable to write of her experiences until 1974" She "died of  cancer in 1984" (Anonymous Anna Swirszczynska (1909 - 1984) archive196.html). One of her most powerful poems was "Conversation Through the Door" which provides us with the simple realities that  relate to warfare. In this piece the narrator is a nurse, and the recipients of the news are parents of a boy who is dying from battle. It is a  poem that subtly, yet powerful, offers us a look at the many pains of war, as well as the pains of life. In the following paper we examine the poem  as it presents us with elements of the literary, the biographical, and the historical. The paper also discusses, for the beneift of the student, briefly the Toulmin Method of examining  this poem. The Poem: The Literary As mentioned, this poem is one of war and the consequences of war. The narrator is presumably a nurse, and the nurse arrives  at an individuals house at five in the morning: "At five in the morning/ I knock on his door" (Swirszczynska 1-2). The narrator speaks through the door that a hospital  has their son, who is dying: "your son, a soldier, is dying" (Swirszczynska 5). The recipient of the news does not open the door the entire way, but opens it  a crack with the chain still keeping the door safely between them. Behind the man is the wife, who is shaking at the news. The narrator informs them that