In Amichai’s poem, the speaker observes how his son plays with a toy gun “that knows/ how to open and close its eyes and say Mama” (lines 8 and 9). This is an example of personification, a figure of speech that confers human qualities or characteristics to an object or animal. Through his use of personification, Amichai suggests a close relationship between the child and the toy gun, between child’s play and the real violence of war.

Rachel Papo (1970) was born in Columbus, OH and raised in Israel. This photograph is from her 2008 series “Serial No. 3817131,” which chronicles the experiences of young Israeli women during their compulsory military service. This particular image was taken during a training exercise. As in most of Papo’s images, it is left to the viewer to decide what is happening inside the frame. Are the soldiers nervous, excited, bored, tired, or playing dead? Are the guns pointing at a specific or imagined target?

Suggested Activities: What kind of human characteristics does Amichai attribute to the gun and why are these meaningful in the context of the poem? What does this personification tell us about the speaker’s relationship to violence and conflict? Ask the students to spend some time looking at Papo’s photograph and make note of how the artist composes this image. Which parts of the gun stand out? Is there a message or critique that this image is communicating, and how does Papo suggest this? Papo and Amichai work in different media, but by placing their work side by side, we can discern overlapping concerns regarding the place of violence and conflict in Israeli culture, play and war, and the relation between guns and power (and how this connects to gender). Papo now lives in the United States, which opens up these questions to the U.S. context as well. Ask students to compare the poem and photograph taking these relations into consideration.