The Difficulties Of Living In A Different Culture Presented in Tom Leonard's Unrelated Incidents and John Agard's Half-Caste
In the two poems 'Unrelated Incidents' by Tom Leonard and 'Half-Caste'
by John Agard the obvious connection is the language is written
phonetically to emphasise the dialect and contrast in culture to the
real English language. In order to convey their opinions on the
prejudices they face they take an almost humorous approach to ridicule
their opposers.
Both the poets' use of punctuation means that when spoken aloud there
is an aggressive tone as in 'Unrelated Incidents' there are no capital
letters, this emphasises the 'wrongness' of his dialect. He pokes fun
at the way people would presume that news given by someone who doesn't
speak with a 'voice of authority' is lying, it is clearly wrong and he
shuns this assumption:
'n thi reason I talk wia BBC accent iz coz yi widny wahnt mi ti talk
aboot thi trooth wia voice lik wanna yoo scruff.'
As the poem progresses the language becomes more and more
dialect-like, this is to make it seem as though the poet is
translating the 'BBC accent' into his own way of speaking. The words
run together to convey the characteristics of colloquial language.
Te poet ends the poem with 'belt up.' It seems that either he is
disinterested with anyone who labels him because of their accent or
he's directly telling them to shut up. The poet is proud of his
heritage and this is an exhibition of this as his boldness and
aggressiveness builds up.
Tom Leonard uses the word 'scruff' which suggests a lack of
credibility and an unsavoury type of person, this idea of prejudice is
also shown in John Agard's poem 'Half-Caste'. He is highlighting the
stupidity of those who use the derogatory term as if the person is
only half and therefore isn't a whole person. In the same way that
Leonard uses humour Agard suggests that simple things such as a piano
are half-caste because of the different coloured keys.
Stensland, Anna Lee. “Indian Boyhood by Charles A. Eastman’” The English Journal 66, no. 3 (1977): 59.
John Smith, the troubled Indian adopted by whites appears at first to be the main character, but in some respects he is what Alfred Hitchcock called a McGuffin. The story is built around him, but he is not truly the main character and he is not the heart of the story. His struggle, while pointing out one aspect of the American Indian experience, is not the central point. John Smith’s experiences as an Indian adopted by whites have left him too addled and sad, from the first moment to the last, to serve as the story’s true focus.
Charles W. Chesnutt, a well-educated mulatto man, lived his life on ‘the color line.’ Chesnutt’s skin was very light and was sometimes mistaken for a white man. Chesnutt chose to identify himself as a black man, but in his works, his characters move back and forth across the color line and struggle with the world they exist in. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line was published one year before The House Behind the Cedars and included the short story, “A Matter of Principle,” where Chesnutt clearly begins to explore what options are available to a mulatto man and his family, which will later evolve in Cedars. Chesnutt incorporates his philosophy of literary naturalism to show John Walden, Rena, and Mr. Clayton in relation to their surroundings and as governed by their instincts, passions, heredity and environment.
If we look closely at the words racial and tension, we can see that it
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
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