SUMMARY OF WHY INDIVIDUALS, EVENTS, OR IDEAS DEVELOP AND INTERACT

OVER THE COURSE OF A TEXT OR STORY

The poem is entitled “Of Children Dying by Hunger Negros Elsewhere,” written by
Mariano Kilates. The said poem tackles poverty and places a greater emphasis on how hunger
creates a fortress of despair. Being in a situation where an individual or a group lacks the
financial resources and necessities for a basic level of living really causes a lot of stress to poor
families. Those people who are not capable of eating three times a day and cannot provide the
basic necessities for everyday living. They would probably ask themselves, why life is so unfair.
Who is to blame when both parties make the mistake? In part of those families, they lack
knowledge when it comes to family planning. Before having a family, parents should be aware if
they are capable of providing for the needs and necessities of their children. If not, then today
isn’t the right time to build one, because parents are not the only ones who will suffer in the
future, but also their children. Also, in the part of our country wherein we have low economic
growth, a weak agricultural sector, increased population rates, and a high volume of inequality.
This gives a very high impact on poor families wherein they experience discrimination, lack of
education, limited access to health care, and food insecurity that causes hunger and worst leads
to death.

In this poem, it eloquently expresses how poverty makes our children's lives difficult.
Each word in this poem has a significant impact because it represents how difficult it is to be in
a circumstance you never expected to be in. Hunger does, in fact, construct a citadel of grief
and sadness because it feels like you're losing your life, and you can't do anything about it
because you don't have money or anything to sustain your living. As mentioned in this poem,
we can all see the sadness in our children’s eyes. Eyes that are meant to see how beautiful
being alive. But with poverty, their eyes, full of tears, doesn’t clearly identify what vision or
dreams are meant for them. Looking up the sky, children can see how beautiful God’s creation,
the stars are shining and the clouds seems like a pillow who can absorb every tear coming from
their eyes. However, thoughts such as why do they need to be in that place and position where
they are having nightmares keep racing across their minds. All those why’s, all those questions.
It seems hunger for them is like a cancer that might kill them anytime. They are in the state of
nothingness where skipping meals serve as their habit and being hungry is normal. All of them
in that place are experiencing hunger so even though they want to help others, they just sit
down thinking why life was so unfair. From that one bowl of food, they share it with one
another and admitting that it isn’t enough for those tiring days they spent searching for that
food. In this poem, it states that there is no charity or helping hand who are willing to help
them because they are in the place where the only thing, they can do is to drink water when
they are hungry because if others can eat three times a day, for them, they need to be satisfied
and happy to eat once even every two days. Their malnourished, thin and weak body is a proof
of how poor they are. It’s sad because they are just a kid. A kid who wants to enjoy life, a kid
who wants to play with others and a kid who wants to study and learn to be able to leave in
that dark situation. It is stated also that no matter how hard their father and mother tried in
working, no matter what efforts they put into it, still, it is not enough to feed the whole family.
They have their leader, their King but that said leader tried to put them down instead of
thinking for the best way on how he can bring up those people in needs to survive hunger and
to at least lessen poverty. For others, money can’t buy happiness. But for these kids who
experience this dark event, I know they need money to be happy. They are innocent, they need
guidance and support. In their stares, you can visualize the big problem running in their mind
continually. For them, no promise or statistic can compass the configuration of their needs.
Sometimes, violence slowly inflicted upon human being that they are willing to hurt others for
the sake of getting foods. For children, people will never allow themselves to be in the situation
where they are right now. Their vision was clear, but poverty was progressively eroding their
dreams. Every day, it feels like they're dying.

The number of hungry and malnourished people in the world continues to grow.
Realizing that the world’s poverty, hunger and children dying are a problem which needs to be
a concern for all the people of the world and not only for those people who are directly
affected by it. People who live with hunger may simply have too little food to eat at their table,
or had no choice but to choose food that is not nutritious. In this poem, it will open our eyes to
the reality and the situation that most people especially the children are experiencing. The
discomfort, suffering, sickness, and pain because of hunger at the same time the anger and
scream of people because of blindness and ignorance. It is a choice they forced to make and not
choose to make. With this, it is not enough to know only the problem itself, or to know their
stories, or to know that there are people suffering, but we should come up with the solution on
how to overcome this problem and that is to secure enough and healthy food for everyone to
achieve optimum health, well-being, and protect them from sickness and dying.