Do you think that all the six people in James Patrick Kinney’s poem The cold within were unaware of the consequences of their discrimination?
Each man was so consumed by hatred, racism, self-centeredness and arrogance that they remained unaware of the self destructiveness of their actions.
It looks more plausible that the six persons were actually unaware of the consequences of their actions. The very thought of death should have made people forget their discrimination against each other. Everyone wants to live at any cost. If they knew that they would be frozen to death, they would have cared to keep the fire burning. This is why I think they were unaware of such unfortunate consequence.
I think all the six people were unaware of the fact that they would die because of the bleak and bitter cold if they were not going to give their logs of wood in the dying fire.
I feel that in the poem cold within all the six people are aware but due to greed, hatred, racial discrimination they are not sharing their fire log with others.
The six persons were unaware of the consequences as they were unable to see anything more than their prejudice, hatred, discrimination based on religion, colour, creed against one or the other person.
They were unaware of what they were doing because they were consumed by or deeply gone into racial discrimination, hatred, arrogance and so on.
The six people in the poem were unaware of their arriving death. We come to know about this by seeing that they could not overcome the prejudices and if they had known that if they will not give up their logs they would die for sure they would have done anything to save themselves.
I think that somewhere in the corner of their mind they were aware of the consequences of their actions but as they were so preoccupied with the thoughts of revenge, discrimination, envy and greed that they just did not pay attention to the fact that they could die because of their narrow minded thoughts.