With Reference to the Context

When students are asked to explain the lines of a poem (or any other kind of text) with reference to the context, they are found to have no proper idea regarding how to write the answer to such questions. Here I provide the guidelines with an example:

1. Start your answer by telling from where or which text the lines have been taken. Mention the source, and then write, at least, one sentence describing the source – what is the text about – to give an understanding of the context the given lines come from. Do this in the first paragraph.

2. Now that you have already set the context, begin the second paragraph by telling what the given lines mean. Here you will explain the lines, either line by line or providing the whole idea as given by the given lines.

3. It is better to sum up the lines. You can do so in the third paragraph.

Explain the following lines with reference to the context?

How many lives were lost
Because of me?
You count.
But have you ever counted
How many have died so far
Because of you and your wars?

The given lines are taken from the poem “Corona Says” by Vishnu Singh Rai. The poem is about the coronavirus’s defensive arguments against the human blame and curse inflicted upon it for the deaths it has caused.

The above given lines continue the defensive argument of the coronavirus that starts from the very beginning of the poem. The poem begins with the coronavirus arguing that since it didn’t come on earth on its own free will but was forcefully invited by the human beings, the humans do not have the right to curse it. Then, in the given lines the corona puts forward another reason for which the humans ought not to curse it. It urges the human beings to compare the number of deaths it has caused with the number of deaths caused by human wars throughout human history. If compared in this way, then obviously, the number of deaths caused by human wars will be much greater than the number of deaths caused by coronavirus because coronavirus is a recent arrival and its infliction spans over only a couple of years. If this argument is to be accepted, then the humans will again lose the rationale for blaming coronavirus, for they themselves will be the culprit of greater harm first. As the corona’s argument goes, humans are acting as if they see the mote in other’s eye but do not see the beam in their own eye.

Thus, in the given lines corona opposes the human curse with one more argument – humans are themselves guilty of greater number of killings.