Michael Luna
October 30 2003

Poem: “A Story About Chicken Soup” by Louis Simpson

Course Objectives:

- Immigrant Narrative: Stage 5- Rediscovery or reassertion of ethnic identity

- Literary Objective: 2- written by a second generation immigrant

Quick Biography:

Louis Simpson was born in Jamaica, West Indies, in 1923, the son of a lawyer of Scottish descent and a Russian mother. He emigrated to the USA at the age of seventeen, studied at Columbia University, then served in the Second World War with the 101st Airborne Division on active duty in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. After the war he continued his studies at Columbia and the University of Paris.

Bedford Glossary Term:

- Figurative Language: Language that employs one or more figure of speech to supplement and even modify the literal denotative meanings of words with additional connotations and richness. Figurative language adds color and immediacy to imagery.

*read the poem from “Unsettling America” page 245 -46*

The poem is broken into three different sections. Each section seems to cover a different phase of what the writer is or has experienced. Regina Richardson from the 2002 class stated that “This poem may be memories from Simpson’s childhood with his grandmother, or Simpson’s perspective of the Jewish holocaust during World War II as a soldier.”

This first section focuses on childhood memories of the past and in particular events involving his grandmother’s house and the old country. This section of the poem appears to be an indicator that the writer has a feeling of homesickness.

In the second section of the poem, the reader is moved to a time during the war. This place is referred to as Berchtesgaden. This town is a place that used to be a harbor of the headquarters of the Gestapo and also a place where Hitler himself wrote part of his book Mein Kampf. 

Link for more information: http://winsoft.net.au/~bartonr/Berchtesgaden.htm

The third and final section of this poem appears to reflect the attitude of the people within the concentration camps. While Simpson is still writing this from the soldier’s perspective, the people he sees want him to be with them. They want for him to also experience what they are experiencing and not to be in the position that he is in.

Question(s):

1. How effective is the poem in getting the reader to sympathize or empathize with what the writer has seen and experienced? How does it do this?