Response Essay. When I first saw the documentary of Aberfan I was shocked and horrified, it was such an unexpected and almost random event to happen ruining so many peoples lives,

Livvie Furner Coursework

Response

21 October 1966, a date that will remain in hundreds of people’s memories for the rest of their lives, for this day held a horrific disaster, an event so tragic it killed many and injured even more, the disaster of Aberfan. A very moving documentary was produced on this incident reliving the memories and digging up specific details by the victims who so luckily survived.

‘The tragedy’ a poem written by Brian Patten, holds an air of suspense throughout the piece of text as you never fully realise or find out what the poem is really trying to inform you of, the narrator has found a piece of paper with a pencil written note etched onto it, whoever has written this mysterious letter is leaving and never coming back. The tragedy is how the narrator does not care about who has written the letter. These two pieces of stimulus are so different in many ways, for one thing one event actually happened and another is just an invented piece of text, however they are both linked with one word, ‘tragedy’. The disaster of Aberfan is very obviously a tragedy in itself with the deaths and injuries of numerous people on the other hand the poem ‘The tragedy’ isn’t so obvious as it’s on a much smaller scale but both have been cleverly linked.

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When I first saw the documentary of Aberfan I was shocked and horrified, it was such an unexpected and almost random event to happen ruining so many peoples lives, the children that were killed in the days events are always kept as children in each and everyone’s memories, like they have been frozen in time. However many times the area in which the tips collapsed and however many designs it may be given over the years to the victims it will always hold an air of sorrow about it, bringing back their memories of the past. This event was a tragedy and without even thinking about it you would claim that it is but when you really think about this word does it really mean something that’s a huge even, effecting numerous amounts of people or can it be a small and almost unnoticed blip in time that doesn’t make a slightest bit of difference to you or people around you. ‘The tragedy’ asks that question, an event so small that it doesn’t even seem to have a relevance to the word, ‘Tragedy’. When I was first reading this poem I didn’t really understand what it was trying to get through to the reader but on reading it a second and third time I came to realise that the ‘tragedy’ was one so small, I didn’t at first see the relevance of reading this poem but as I began to think about it the possibilities unravelled at what the hidden meanings of this poem could possibly mean and began to think about the word tragedy in a different light, something so huge it effects hundreds or something so small you don’t even notice.

We were given a task in groups to produce a freeze frame based upon the documentary we watched about Aberfan, the brief included making five frozen images that descried the events of Aberfan. The group that I worked with came up with the following ideas:

The children in the classrooms oblivious to what was about to happen:

To show this scene we had children all taking part in different activities and one child looking out the window daydreaming but also without realising staring straight at the mound about to collapse.

The waste tip collapsing on the town and school
The community coming together to help the children stuck underneath the waste
The mothers hugging their children after finding out what had happened
Rows of bodies, relatives holding on to their hands.

We were also given quotes and memories from people involved, we then had to incorporate these into out piece to show how each of us were feeling at the given time, our group decide it was best to take out irrelevant words and phrases shorten the quotes to deliver more of an impact to the audience.

After we had completed the freeze frames we were given the task to produce a role play on the poem ‘The tragedy’ by Brian Patten. Our interpretation of the poem was a love affair. A father of two is having an affair with a rather beautiful lady who was also very slyly a friend of his wife’s. After much hidden and secretive meetings the young lady wishes to run away with her lover never to return again however he has different plans. She writes a note telling him she is leaving as she has had enough of his weakness to tell his loving wife of the affair. She delivers the piece of paper to the house however is doesn’t reach the person in which it should. The note slips down the back of the cooker to be discovered days later by the man’s daughter, she neither knows what it is about or cares, that is the tragedy. We attempted to use comedy and drama to convey a very successful piece with the air of mystery.