Silence

Throughout the collection, the author explores silence as a form of resistance through the Vasenka townspeople's feigned deaf- and dumbness in response to Petya's death. After the Sergeant shoots Petya for disobeying orders in the opening poem of Act One, "Gunshot," the country wakes up "the next morning" in "Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins," refusing to hear the soldiers (14). No matter what the occupying soldiers say and do to the people, they run away, "pointing to their ears" (14). Alfonso confides a secret in his reader in the eighth line of the above poem saying, "Our hearing doesn't weaken, but something silent in us strengthens" (14). Instead of resisting with wild chants, or with protests, the townspeople of Vasenka choose not to hear, or to speak. The Vasenka townspeople's insurgency contrasts starkly with those of the speaker in the collection's opening poem, "We Lived Happily During the War." This...