📚 Poem Analysis :”A Century Later"

A Century Later
The school-bell is a call to battle,
every step to class, a step into the firing-line.
Here is the target, fine skin at the temple,
cheek still rounded from being fifteen.
Surrendered, surrounded, she
takes the bullet in the head
and walks on. The missile cuts
a pathway in her mind, to an orchard
in full bloom, a field humming under the sun,
its lap open and full of poppies.
This girl has won
the right to be ordinary,
wear bangles to a wedding, paint her fingernails,
go to school. Bullet, she says, you are stupid.
You have failed. You cannot kill a book
or the buzzing in it.
A murmur, a swarm. Behind her, one by one,
the schoolgirls are standing up
to take their places on the front line.
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The poem “ A Century Later “ is taken from the collection Over the Moon which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award in 2014.
Imtiaz Dharker was
Born in Pakistan, Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She is an accomplished artist and documentary filmmaker, and has published five collections of poems and drawings with Bloodaxe: Postcards from god (including Purdah) (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), The terrorist at my table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009). Her most recent collection, Over the Moon (2014), was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award and in the same year she received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Imtiaz Dharkar wrote this poem exactly 100 years after the beginning of the First World War as a response to Wilfred Owens Anthem for “ Doomed Youth “ . She uses this commemoration to draw a comparison. This poem is concerned with the struggles of schoolgirls around the world in fighting for their Right to Education, akin to soldiers in a more traditional conflict. In doing so , she places the iconic images of the First World War in a modern context . The poem also alludes to another specific event , the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in 2012, a young Human Rights activist who continues to campaign for the education of women. Dharkar contrasts two opposing images , a bullet and a book - as the oppressor and the oppressed . However as Dharkar states at the end you cannot kill a book or the buzzing in it .
Malala is an educational activist from Pakistan , who is the youngest to have won the Nobel Peace Prize . The Taliban took control of her homeland. The extremists banned many things like owning a television, playing music and enforced harsh punishments for those who defied their orders .
The poem is symbolic and has rich imagery.
The poem shows resistance and the strength of the new generation.