Dear End_of_an_Era,

That was a very interesting poem to read. I found it particularly thought provoking about how someone must feel to be trapped in Azkaban. We as readers are, perhaps, fortunate to have been provided with a very good description of what a Dementor’s effects feel like through the actual books. However, we never were provided with exactly what Azkaban felt like. We were certainly able to make conjectures and we had vague hints and references, but we never really got to visit the actual place. Thus, your topic, which seems to be very near to what has been written in the actual books, is quite unique.

I think that writing this in a poem (as opposed to prose) was very fitting for the situation. If a prisoner was indeed being held within Azkaban, I don’t think that they would have been able to have had the clarity of thought to come up with something in prose form. A poem, though, tends to lend itself to expressing more emotion and feeling, which is really what you want to experience when you’re describing a particularly horrible place like Azkaban. So, excellent choice on the format.

Even though this is written from the point of view of an anonymous inmate, I couldn’t help but think that this could have been written from the point of view of Barty Crouch Jr’s mother. I think that the way you described death as a “silent peace” and the remarks about the “innocent prisoner” who lies there led to this. When she entered Azkaban, she was already very ill and expected to die. Furthermore, she hadn’t committed an actual crime. I have the impression that people who are imprisoned for the crimes that they commit (Sirius and Bellatrix leap to mind), it gives them something to think about. As there was no reference to some sort of crime in this poem and the person seems to be viewing the prison fairly objectively, I couldn’t help but think that this was Mrs. Crouch, awaiting her certain and upcoming death and remarking upon her surroundings.

On that note, I quite liked how death has been described as a “silent peace” here. It’s as if the inmate simultaneously fears and welcomes death. Death would certainly put him/her out of the misery within Azkaban, but it is still death, which is certainly something that all mortals fear. I thought that this phrase was particularly eloquent and appropriate for the poem and I liked how it served a dual purpose as the title of the work as well.

I quite enjoyed this lovely bit of poetry!

~Kelly