Answer: it emphasizes the displacement of the speaker's family.
Throughout the poem, the author maintains an extended metaphor about swimming. As she tells us the story of how her family escaped the island, she talks to us about swimming, drowning, the beach, the pool, etc. This is intended to emphasize the displacement of the family. Alvarez feels lost and adrift, much like we would feel if we were lost at sea.
Answer:
The children will be forgotten by the wicked woman soon
Some personification that I see are..
"The brush grabbed at his legs in the dark..."
"The high mountain wind coasted sighing through the pass and whistled on the edges..."
by insisting that everyone with a soul deserves rights
