The Cold Within

Extract I
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a…
…bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

(i) Alliteration is used in the line “In bleak and bitter cold”. Six
humans are caught against their will in “bleak and bitter cold”,
but none of them uses the wooden stick each one has.
The cold is bleak and bitter because these six humans are not
warm or friendly with another. The atmosphere is bleak
because there is no hope for anyone to survive.

(ii) The six people who are different from each other on the basis
of races, envy, revenge, etc. are referred in the above extracts.
They were need the logs because they needed logs of wood to
keep the fore burning.

(iii) The first person who is a woman is prejudiced when she

notices that one of the faces around the fire is black. She,
therefore, hold her log back.
The next man is a bigot who on seeing that one of the men in
the group does not belong to the same church (i.e. religion
community) as his. This fact prevents himself from using his log
to renew the fire.
(iv) The first person holds back her log because she was guided by
her prejudiced attitude towards the black man. So, she does
not use the log to prevent the black man from getting its
warmth.
(v) Metaphorically, it can be understood as the fire of compassion
in their hearts that is dying. To keep it burning what they need
is a log of wood, but they do not use it,
They, by the end, each one of them dies from “the cold within”.
The outside cold could have been taken care of only if they
were not cold from within.

Extract II

The third one sat in tattered clothes.

He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should…
…to spite the white.

(i) Tattered clothes means tore or racked clothes. It

symbolizes that person is a poor man. To protect himself
from freezing cold he gives his coat a hitch. He does not
use his log to prevent the reach man sitting there from
getting warm.

(ii) The man seems to be a victim of discrimination based on

the economic standard of different individuals. He is
envious of the rich man consider him as ‘idle’. He is
prejudiced and thus does not use his log to prevent the
rich man sitting there from getting.

(iii) The rich man, obvious to reality, thinking that how to

safeguard the wealth he possessed from poor man who is
 considered as lazy and aimless. It reflects the thinking of
rich people toward the poor and it also refer the class
bias of rich man.

(iv) The black man is filled with revenge for the white man.
Based on the colour of the skin, the racism he considers
the white man different from himself.

(v) It means that the black man’s face looks revengeful and
the only thing visible to him in his stick is a chance to
harm the white man.

Extract III

The last man of the forlorn group

Did nought except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he play…
…from the cold within.

(i) It is ironical and sad that these six people sitting together in
a group are “forlorn”. Their cold-heartedness invites death
in the end and they die which their logs held tight in their
hands. The figure of speech is used here an ‘oxymoron’ in
which opposite ideas are put together.

(ii) Poet referring the game of “selfishness” (give and take).

The last man of this lonely does nothing except something
for his benefit. He gives only to those who give him
something back in return.
(iii) Their logs being held tight in their hands invite death. It is
nothing but proof of human sin, the poem ends with a note
that these six people die not from the freezing cold outside
but of the cold within them, lack of humanity, and
treatment of discrimination.

(iv) Owning to their prejudices against one another, it becomes

difficult for them to put their stick into the fire.
Discrimination, racism and bigotry prove futile as none of
the six people says alive by the end. Each perishes, not
because of cold outside but of the cold-heartedness within
each.

(v) The message that the poet tries to give is that

discriminatory attitude and bigotry that humans have
against one another on the basis of race, class and religion
is futile. It is self-destruction. The six-person in the poem
can be seen as representative of the whole human race. It
is said that these people are over taken by the feeling of
revenge, spite and anger to such an extent that eventually
these prejudices lead to death. Warmth and compassion
for each other are not seen in them.