Please respond to Ariel Dorfman’s poem, “Hope,” from his collection In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land.

In Ariel Dorfman's poem, "Hope," the idea of hope at the
beginning of the poem seems impossible, and one must ask the question as to how hope
could possibly survive under the circumstances described. A family's son is taken away
for questioning. It that country, the car does not come with painting on the side and
uniformed officers, but without license plates—as if occupied by ghosts that arrive in
the night and are never seen again—who cannot be
questioned:

They took
him

just for a few hours

they
said

just for some
routine

questioning...

we
couldn't

find out

anything
else

about
him.

The tragic irony of the
story, of course, is the news the parents receive five months later, from a friend who
was also detained, who recognized their son's voice...and his screams. For the
"authorities" were torturing him. Their hope was that they would continue to do so—how
is this possible? Next year, if he was still being tortured in eight months, at least he
would still be alive. And that was their
hope.