Hello everyone, I am Nidhi Dave, a student of the department of English, MKBU. This blog is a response to my Thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. In this blog I'm going to discuss the thematic study of poems.
🔆The Piano and The Drums by Gabriel Okara
✴️About the author:
Gabriel Okara is prominent among African poets. He was born in 1921 and raised to be an Ijaw man at Bumadi village in Niger Delta, Nigeria. His full name is Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara.
Gabriel Okara as an African renowned poet is noted to be someone who fathoms African culture right from the onset. He is cognizant of the ways at which Africans are biding with their cultural orientation. In such a case, he exercises an African musical instrument, the drum , that is peculiar to their primitive culture to make a stand for Africans and their culture in his poetic presentation. The drum is actually a symbol plied by the poet in order to make delineation for Africans.
✴️The Piano and The Drums:
In the poem, the piano and the drums, the poetic persona shows the difference between the normal lifestyle of Africans and that of the modern world. The setting of the poem, as is seen in the poem, dates from the advent of civilization to the modern time. The central theme of the poem hinges on the effect of foreign culture on Africans. This theme he elaborates using the effect of music on the poetic persona as an analogy. The poem tries to emphasize the purity of African content before the interference of civilization.
In essence, Gabriel Okara perceives the desecration of the African way of life from the musical perspective, and comes out to lament about it through the instrument of poetry.
✴️Thematic study of poem:
1) Nature:
- African natural sceneries
- Animals
- Mystic rhythm
- Naked warmth
2) Motherland:
- Mother's lap
- Description of nature
- Paths with no innovation
- Naked warmth (African essence)
3) Childhood nostalgia:
- Primal youth
- Animals-leaves- flowers
- Mother's lap-suckling
4) Cultural conflict:
- Drum versus Piano
- African culture versus Western Culture
- Complexed piano versions - Natural drum Urbans and rawness
5) Dilemma:
- Keep one culture - follow another
- African culture base - Western culture desire
- Chaos of culture - which one to follow
- What to choose
- How to dwell in both culture
1, Nature:
Piano and Drums is quite clearly a poem about the cultural dichotomy of traditional and Western cultures in post-colonial Africa, but the raw emotion of the poem makes it an expression of confusion that anyone tied to more than one culture (which is a lot of people in this day and age of globalization) can relate to. Even failing that, the imagery of the poem is powerful enough to express his confusion – we can almost feel Okara’s indecision seeping through the page. Okara’s metaphors are simple but fitting: the drums represent traditional African life, while the piano represents the Western world. What I love so much about the writing in this poem is how his reaction to each “instrument” is portrayed.
The environment in this culture is physically dangerous, surrounded by wild animals. Drums here are a way of communication, and “jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw…” shows the way of life in this culture. This is life which is simple, near the beginnings of man. The stanza ... ... middle of paper ... ...with one another, with Drums illustrating primitive behavior, and a savage, dangerous culture. The connotations of the piano are complex and technical. The piano uses significantly different word sounds, showing that it is learnt, westernized and intricate compared to the drums which is instinctive and naturally acquired, and simple. The poem uses no set rhyme pattern which suits the poem as it has an undecided effect, emphasizing the confusion of the persona over his future.
2, Motherland:
Once again, the poetic persona remembers of years back when he was still an infant in his mother’s laps suckling her breast (lines 9 to 11). Suddenly, he is walking the paths of the village with no new ideas of a way of life different from the one he is born into:
In this line we find the theme of motherland.
“At once I’m walking simple
Paths with no innovations,
Rugged, fashioned with the naked
Warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
In green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.”
3, Childhood nostalgia:
The poetic persona remembers years back when he was still an infant in his mother’s laps suckling her breast. Suddenly, he is walking the paths of the village with no new ideas of a way of life different from the one he is born in.
4, The Theme of Culture / Conflict:
Culture in Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara In the poem “Piano and Drums” the poet Gabriel Okara depicts and contrasts two different cultures through symbolism of pianos and drums. The Poem is divided into four stanzas. The first two stanzas represent the “drum” culture and the second two stanzas show the “piano” culture. The description of the drums is in two stanzas, but is one sentence long. The first line of the first stanza: ‘When at break of day at a riverside’ Uses trochees to emphasize the deliberate broken rhythm. The stanza has savage words, “bleeding flesh,” “urgent raw,” “leopard snarling,” “spears poised,” to show that this is a primitive culture, one which has dependency on the environment, as is represented by the “hunters crouch with spears poised.” The environment in this culture is physically dangerous, surrounded by wild animals. Drums here are a way of communication, and “jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw…” shows the way of life in this culture. This is life which is simple, near the beginnings of man. The stanza ... ... middle of paper ... ...with one another, with Drums illustrating primitive behavior, and a savage, dangerous culture. The connotations of the piano are complex and technical. The piano uses significantly different word sounds, showing that it is learnt, westernized and intricate compared to the drums which is instinctive and naturally acquired, and simple. The poem uses no set rhyme pattern which suits the poem as it has an undecided effect, emphasizing the confusion of the persona over his future.
5, The Theme of Dilemma:
The theme of dial also features in the poem, while the poet speaks glowingly of african culture, he also finds european culture, despite its shortcomings, seductive. Thus he is unable to decide whether to let go of the inherited culture or embrace the new one; this is the plight of many educated Africans today . many have however resolve this dilemma by taking from the two cultures in what has come to be known as cultural syncretism Poetic Device of literary terms in Piano and Drum.
Poem: 2 , Vultures by Chinua Achebe
‘Vultures’ is one of the famous poems of the Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe. It is a dark and somber piece that focuses on the Belsen concentration camp and a commandant who works there.
✴️Chinua Achieve:
Chinua Achebe was born on the 16th of November, in 1930 to Isaiah Okafo Achebe, a servant of the church missionary society, and Janet Anaenechi Iloegbunam. He spent his childhood in Igbo town. The storytelling was part of an ancient tradition in the Igbo society. His mother and sister used to narrate him various stories on Chinua’s request, which helped him develop his interest in literature. His father also had a vast literary collection along with the pictures of colleges hung at their home including, Shakespeare’s literature and ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’. These influences played a crucial role in his early development toward writing.
✴️Poem:Vultures:-
Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ is a gritty poem that is hard to read due to the harrowing subject matter. By using several visual and olfactory imagery, Achebe creates a dark and filthy environment in the poem. It depicts a truthful picture of the Belsen concentration camp. The commandant, in the poem, is none other than a representative of a class, who selflessly thinks of his own family even if thousands of families are rotting just around him. The fetid smell of rotting humanity inside him gets featured through the imagery of the vultures.
✴️Thematic study of poem:
Predation, love and barbarism are three major thematic strands of this poem. Achebe has beautifully presented the predatory rapacity of colonialism through the Commandant at Belson, equating him with the vultures enjoying their feast at the charnel house. Yet, Achebe says that both show the other side of their barbarism that is love. When vultures have their fill, they show love for each other and when the commandment is tired of cruelty over his subjects, he shows love and tenderness for his children. The poem, then, asks the readers to praise the Lord that he has put love in hate and hate in love in almost all his creatures.
1, Nazism:
Bergen Belson was one of the many notorious Nazi concentration camps. Unlike the death camps such as Auschwitz it did not have gas chambers. Instead prisoners were worked to death on a starvation diet. Conditions were appealing and the cruelty was unspeakable. By the time the camp was liberated by Allied troops 50,000 European citizens had been killed within its fences many of the dead were put into mass graves; others were incinerated in giant crematoria. One its most famous victims was the diarist Anne Frank.
2, Vulture as metaphor:
Vultures symbolize death and decomposition. The poet tells us that these symbols of death and evil, who eat the decaying corpses, can have a loving side. This image of love contrasts with their evil nature. bashed-in head – another image of violence that creates a terrifying/ugly picture of them.
3, Ecology-vulture:
This first stanza of ‘Vultures’ begins with a relentlessly long sentence filled with dark, sullen descriptions. Achebe uses alliteration in the second and third lines: “and drizzle of one despondent/ dawn unstirred by harbingers.” But this is an enjambed line and so doesn’t give the ebb and flow usually associated with alliteration. This helps to emphasize the bleak tone Achebe is trying to achieve.This creates a sinner atmosphere. Achebe identifies the charnel house as the belsen concentration camp where Jews and other prisoners were killed and their bodies were often burned. 'Human roast' refers to the victims in the concentration camp as if they were being cooked.
4, Humanism:
In the Humanism theme we find in two stanzas Achebe skillfully contrasts the “light” of love with the “dark” of death by mentioning that in this darkest of environments, the “charnel-house,” a storage place for corpses, there is the presence of love. He personifies love itself.
Achebe uses an exclamation point on the phrase “her face turned to the wall” because love can’t stand to look at the atrocities contained within. It may also be a reference to people being lined up against walls before being gunned down by firing squads, but that’s purely speculative.His description is not particularly flattering. The commandant’s only physical description includes his “hairy nostrils” but his actions are kind and very human. He brings chocolate home for his child. A kind gesture and not actions one would probably associate with a war criminal.
This is further emphasized by the lines “the very germ/ of that kindred love.” This is not the voice of the narrator but rather a peek into the psyche of the commandant, showing the narrator’s omniscience. It is chilling to think that the commandant views his softer side as a curse, or a “germ”. Achebe closes this stanza by using the phrase “perpetuity of evil” suggesting that evilness is enduring, everlasting. This leaves the poem on a very bleak note.
5, Scavenger:
In the theme of Scavenger we find in the third stanza how Vulture is important in this poem for scavengers. The third stanza then shifts its focus to the Commandant at Belsen Camp, who at the time is finishing work and going home for the day.
This is the thematic study of both poems.
Words: 1,999
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