The Sorrows of Yamba
The poem The Sorrows of Yamba is written by Hannah More/Eaglesfield Smith. This title evokes struggle and tragedy experienced by Yamba—a stereotypical name of an African slave woman. This poem is a ‘slave suicide genre’ , where Yamba, an African slave undergoes a change while attempting suicide. There are various diversions of tone, language, and form in this poem. Each stanza is a series of quatrains with abab as the rhyme scheme. Lines 73-76: Mourning thus my wretched state (Ne’er may I forget the day) Once in a dusk of evening late, Far from home I dar’d to stray.
The narrator begins the passage with a tone of despair through the words ‘mourning’ (73) and ‘wretched’ (73) by portraying the sorrowful state of Yamba. She experiences unforgettable harrowing situations in her life. The slave traders kidnap her with children and sell to cruel masters, where she experiences dehumanising atrocities. Her child perishes. She tries to end her sufferings by
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There is an abrupt change of tone from despair to optimism. The ‘Strand’ (81) becomes a turning point in her life, which changes for good when she luckily meets the ‘English Missionary’ (82) . There is an underlying irony in the word ‘good’ (82) as she has an aversion towards Englishmen for destroying her life and addresses them as ‘savage’ (37) and ‘tyrants’ (55) earlier. The poet uses ‘colloquial’ dialect like ‘Bible book’ (83) . Yamba lacks knowledge of grammar and speaks in ‘broken syntax’ like ‘me no understood’ (84) . The subject ‘I’ (81) changes into the object ‘me’ (84) . Lines 85-88: Led by pity from afar He had left his native ground; Thus, if some inflict a scar, Others fly to cure the
The two main rhetorical devices used in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” are tone and symbolism both of which connect the reader’s emotions to the purpose of the essay. The are multiple tonal shifts throughout “Mother Tongue”. From guilt, to shame, to pride, to many more. One of these
The poem ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley forms thorough comparisons regarding theme with Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ as Henley conceives themes of fate, circumstance, and struggle in his literary piece. These thematic connections are shown when the protagonist, Okonkwo, of ‘Things Fall Apart’ is faced with the task of emerging from poverty and becoming a man that is successful, yet feared. He is also challenged with his own inner demons as the white man reshapes his way of life, driving Okonkwo to a fate much different than what he
To my horror, no one helped him up—just simply stepped over him. In the next line,babies cried from hunger and children tugged at their mothers’ dresses. If there’s one thing I’ll remember most about that day in Chamama, it’s the sound of crying babies” (Kamkwamba 85). In those quotes, he shows the readers the desperation and suffering they endured. Kamkwamba uses pathos so much that it becomes a little bit abusive because it is the main point of the story.
In Gwen Harwood’s poetry, the changes in an individual’s perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences, usually in the form of a person or an event. These changes are either results of a dramatic realisation, as seen with shattering of a child’s hopes in The Glass Jar, or a melancholy and gradual process, where a series of not so obvious discoveries produces similar reformation. An example of the later case would be Nightfall, the second section of Father and Child, where the persona refers to her forty years of life causing “maturation”. For the most part these changes are not narrated directly but are represented by using dynamic language
This poem focuses on the lynching of a African American male. The speaker of the poem appears to console a woman who appears to be distressed due to the events taking place. In the first four lines of stanza 1, the speaker says:
In this literary analysis it is essential to compare and contrast Cathy Song’s poem “Heaven” and Bryan Thao Worra’s poem “Pen/Sword” to give the reader a better understanding of what the authors’ are conveying to their readers. The similarities in the style, word choice, and theme will be compared, along with the differences of style, word choice, and theme reflected throughout each poem. Furthermore, I will determine the meaning behind the broken up and/or the way the lines of each poem while describing why the lines are strategically placed throughout the pieces. This will allow me to identify the meaning that the authors’ are explaining to the reader. Each poet specifically writes to give the reader(s) a picture of what they are feeling and defining their emotion through their writing.
After the ellipses, there is a shift back to the poetic “I”. The speaker states that while starring into the sockets of the victim’s skull, he becomes “frozen” with the “pity for the life that was gone”. This transitional sentence separates the scene of the already occurred murder from the present material world. The material world revives around the speaker in the next sentence of the poem. In this massive sentence, Wright dramatically personifies the nature in order to transform the cruel historical scene into the current time. However, the significant transformation of the poetic “I” to the “thing” starts when “the ground gripped” the poet’s feet. From that line, the personified ground captures the speaker, and from the observer of already happened images of the lynching, he revives as a participant in the present scene. In this scene, when the dry bones “melting themselves” into the poet’s bones, he becomes the victim of the lynching. The last minutes of the victim’s life are graphically presented in the third stanza of the poem. The first person’s perspective is a very powerful element, which Wright uses in order to put any reader into the African Americans unlawful suffering from the terror lynching. Furthermore, it is obvious that in the Richard
The poem “English” by Yusef Komunyakaa preoccupies itself with the persona’s perception of the situation where he was in when he first learned the English language—during war time, when he was still a young and naïve boy. The persona’s narration is recollective in nature, but there is an evident attempt to detach himself from the experiences he had a long time ago.
Throughout literature, the slave narrative has become quite commonplace, and while there are only so many ways for an author to distinguish their work from the rest of these narratives Yaa Gyasi does just this with “Homegoing”. “Homegoing” is a narrative with intense emotional depth geared toward depicting the strong cultural roots of differing tribes in the African continent and the many tribulations they face through the family lineage of two sisters separated at birth. Over the span of the narrative, this family tree allows for the story to traverse through time in an attempt to showcase the numerous accounts and degrees of struggle that each descendant faces, which is factored in by the time period they live in. Furthermore, while
The first woman introduced is Hecuba, who grieves for her family, people, and ravaged homeland. She says, “Sorrow, my sorrow. What sorrow is there
The poems by Komninos and Langley also use tone to relay the persona’s attitude. In Komninos’ poem, the persona, who happens to be the poet, is fed up of being treated differently by Australians because of his heritage and is using the poem to “assert” himself “as an Australian… as an artist.” In Langley’s poem, the Australian persona relays a positive view of Australia, representing Australians as compassionate, educated and respectful whilst relaying an unfavourable opinion of immigrants, portraying them as self-absorbed and “god-like” in an unnatural, unfitting sense. Tone is helped to represent Australian identity by the use of a persona and the use of language in the text.
The poem “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” by Amiri Baraka uses vivid images of sights, sounds, and daily activities to symbolize a heartfelt story. In the poem, Amiri, is one of the African American slaves who is frustrated about the discriminatory treatment by whites. So frustrated he wants to commit suicide. The writer used transition words starting with “lately”, “now”, and “then” for each stanza. He was imagining how he acted before his death and how his daughter reacted to his death.
These two seemingly opposite tones and moods existing in one poem simultaneously resemble the ambiguity in the speaker that he reveals when he describes his condition very ambiguously. For instance, in the first line, he portrays himself as a “dead man”(1), but in the line immediately after, the dead man is moaning, which is biologically impossible. The unclear subject raises the issue of who the speaker is, if he should not be able to comment on himself because he is already dead. When the speaker uses the same pronouns, “he” and “him” from both the first person and the third person perspectives to refer to himself, this becomes even more puzzling; the readers are no longer sure of who the speaker is and who the subject of the poem is. One possible cause of these uncertainties is the discrepancy between the speaker’s real self and his public self; one that resembles who he
Furthermore, we have the use of first person, where the almost universal effect is to have an in-depth look into the character and their immediate response to a problem or dilemma. This poem no different, where in the first stanza we are ushered in with the use of anaphora in lines 2, 3 and 4 with the repetition of the word ‘’and’’. This specific use of anaphora is used to create the mindset and intelligible deduction of the traveller to the events and dilemma prescribed to him. Insofar as his immediate reaction be being presented with a choice. It shows his reaction of regret in that he is ‘’sorry he could not travel both’’ and explains what he wish he could do ‘’be two travellers’’ but also how he initiates his decision making process ‘’looked down one as far as I could’’. Also, the use of first person is used to connect with the reader, enforcing the affore-used notion that the reader substitutes their own personal truth into a positive
Imagery of texture is threaded through the poem as the poet tries to create a connection with her profession and her writing. The extended metaphor of needlework and sewing is mimetic of the mother’s emotional stress and grief causing her stomach to be “busy making tucks, darts, pleats” when faced with loss. This line has a series of connotations as the “tucks, darts, pleats” hint at the plunging, gut-wrenching lurch of her emotions and link with the ‘ornamental stitch’ at the end –which also creates an umbilical image connecting mother and son. On the contrary, the use of the harsh consonants could also portray the mother’s anxiety of her son leaving. Similarly, in ‘A Mother in a Refugee Camp’, Achebe has threaded emotions through the use of imagery to reflect the mothers “tenderness” for her son and the melancholy she experiences as she is hopeless in saving him. Continued in language, Weir utilizes the element of time to mimic the extended metaphor of needlework imagery- “ornamental stich” - because time is a key aspect, which weaves back and forth, from the past- when he was a child, to the present time of when she is telling the