The poem criticizes Western influence and dependency on other nations under colonial rule. This poem describes a terrorist watching a bar where he has planted a bomb set to explode at 1:20 pm. Over the course of the minutes leading up to the explosion, the terrorist observes various people entering and leaving the bar.Well-known in her native Poland, Wisława Szymborska received international recognition when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.
She studied Polish literature and
society at university and worked as an editor and columnist. “The Terrorist,
He’s Watching” by Wislawa Szymborska is a poem that tells about the narrator
waiting anxiously for a planted bomb to explode in a bar, watching and
describing people as they enter and leave the bar. When a person leaves, the
narrator acts as though that person is going to miss a real treat; when a person
enters the bar, the tone of the narrator seems to increase, as though all of
those to experience the bomb are quite lucky indeed.
The speaker of the poem, at
first, seems to be that of an accomplice to the terrorist or someone who just
happens to be watching and understanding what is going on – perhaps the person
that has ordered the terrorist to leave the bomb. This can be seen in lines
1-7, when the narrator is describing the movements and actions of the
terrorist, noting how he is now safe from the blast of the bomb. It is more
likely that this first narrator is an accomplice, or someone on the inside of
the job, as, in the first line, they state the time that the bomb is supposed
to go off in the bar.
After the second stanza of the
poem, the narrator seems to be the terrorist himself, watching eagerly as
people go in and out of the bar, counting down the minutes until his bomb is
supposed to go off. This can be seen from the second stanza and until the end
of the poem, as the narrator now seems a little more aware of what is going on,
keeping the countdown by every minute and every second. The feelings of the
narrator are more pronounced – he becomes disappointed as people go on – “Was
she that dumb did she go in, or not?
And more pleased when they leave –
“The short one, he’s lucky, he’s getting on a scooter”. The role of narrator
seems to change as each person is able to get a better view of what is going on
inside of the bar. The accomplice took over first, as the terrorist was busy
setting the bomb, then, once the narrator was outside of the bar, he was able
to take over and see what was happening.
As
readers, we are able to know what he was thinking, what he was planning, and
the numerous things he was feeling as a set to put his plan in motion to kill.
Due to the use of the first person narrative, we were able to experience his
emotions almost first hand; it was though the narrator was telling us,
face-to-face, the ordeal he went through to assure the old man’s death. The use
of first person allows us to become closer to the narrator, close enough to
understand what he is doing. That is the
magic of the first person narrative – we are able to experience everything first-hand,
as though we were accompanying the protagonist.
Source: https://literaryglobe.poetry.blog/poems-2/conflict/the-terrorist-hes-watching/
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