At the Bomb Testing Site
What is the theme in At the Bomb Testing Site by William Stafford?
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Death is a major theme in this book. "At the Bomb Testing Site" makes a big point by focusing on something very small: a solitary desert lizard facing destruction. By describing something concrete, the poem addresses the unimaginable. It works by subtly enlarging our perceptions of nature, violence, and death. The poem is written in a quiet, casual tone that increases in intensity in the third stanza but never mentions the words "death" or "war." Instead we get that information from the title and infer the rest from the unfolding description of the lizard.