Painted Tongue Poem Analysis

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Beginning in residential school, Painted Tongue is called heathen by a religious school teacher, and after a while, he starts to question if maybe he is a heathen (Boyden 72-73). Boyden is illustrating the relationship between colonizer and colonized, with a repression of one’s spiritually by the preaching of another’s religion. This is another example of the effects of slow violence on Painted Tongue, where small differences such as contrasting religious or spiritual faiths, become the oppression of the minority …show more content…

He protects his territory against intruding joggers, prepares to defend himself against a fat, white nurse, “stares down an ugly woman in tight shorts”, even frightens a young child and protects himself against teenagers in a warrior-type fashion (Boyden 54-76). The amount of violence he commits is in fact non-existent. Even when he needs it most, to protect the gay jogger being attacked by the skinheads, he cannot find his “warrior song” (Boyden 64-65). In the end, when defending himself against the teenagers, Painted Tongue’s only form of attack is to gently count coup on his victims, or rather, gently touch them (Boyden 74-76). He potentially comes to a tragic end when one of the teenagers trips him and sends him unto his broken bottle (Boyden 76). This may be Boyden’s way of saying violence is not the answer, it is not the correct way to fight back against colonialism. Frantz Fanon would entirely disagree with this statement, with his opinion being that “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon” (35). In other words, no battle can be fought without bloodshed, and decolonization is no exception. According to Boyden, however, violence is not the most effective way for Painted Tongue to fight back, so what is? Although violence is not Painted Tongue’s only form of expression, some of his other ones, such as humming and mimicry, are heavily influenced by other people’s perception of him and thus limit their effectiveness. Unfortunately, it seems as if these forms of expression are a better tool against colonialism than violence, but they never reach their full potential due to the limitations forced upon them. These limitations are predominantly stereotypes or generalizations, which are contributing factors of ongoing

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