Loving a country which is slowly getting destroyed is a heartbreak that is thankfully only known to some. It is however not just heartbreak for those who feel it. It is anger and a feeling of unfairness alongside with the spirit necessary to not let that happen. Spirit to not let their country and culture be erased. In the poem Tell Them by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner she portrays the feeling of wanting desperately to keep her culture and homeland alive. “Tell them about the water-how we have seen it rising, flooding across our cemeteries, gushing over the sea walls, and crashing against our homes “(p. 2, ll. 72-75). In this quote, the problem at hand is clear. She spells out the heartbreaking effects climate change has on her home, the Marschall Islands, and her entire culture.
Kathy, our narrator, is a first-person narrator. This can be seen at the very start of the poem in the quote: “I prepared the package for my friends in the States” (p. 1, ll. 1-2). Here she clearly uses I, which she throughout the poem uses to tell the story of her own experience. Kathy also repeatedly uses the pronouns “them” throughout the poem. “Tell them we are descendants of the finest navigators in the world “(p. 1, ll. 27-29). Here she uses “them“ to refer to everyone her friends need to tell about the Marschall Islands and the culture.
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