What are the motifs in While I Was Gone a War Began by Ana Castillo?

Fiction versus Reality is a recurring idea in the poem. Perhaps it is a human defense mechanism to confuse fiction and reality. When the narrator of this poem hears the news about a war starting, she is not sure that the story she is hearing is real. "It seems I saw this story / in a Hollywood movie, / or on a Taco Bell commercial." The narrator is trying to point out that life in the modern world of television, movies, and other media has blurred the lines between reality and fiction and has deadened the reaction to real disaster by making people feel as if it is not real people who are suffering and dying.