September 1, 1939

The poem opens by establishing the setting and the perspective. The narrative is told in first-person point of view through a speaker sitting in a bar in New York City—many miles away from the conflict alluded to in the poem’s title. This immediately suggests that the impact of the war extends beyond Poland or Europe, creating repercussions on a global scale. Although the poet himself had recently come from Europe, this is not stated in the poem; instead, the reader is left to perceive that no one, American or European, is exempt from the effects of war: “Waves of anger and fear / Circulate over the bright / And darkened lands of the earth” (Lines 6-8). The first few lines lean heavily into S sounds (sometimes called sibilance) before transitioning into the harder consonants to foreshadow the looming conflict. Once the broad setting is established, the speaker moves away from the present moment and examines the “scholarship” (Line 12) of the past. They state that cracks in humanity have always existed, and these cracks can be driven open and exploited by trauma. This, the speaker believes, is what happened to Adolph Hitler, which raises the question of whether evil is something that is born or made.