‘Compare and contrast ‘Nothing’s changed’ by Tatamkhulu Afrika and ‘Still I rise’ by Maya Angelou’
There are thousands of different poems worldwide from different cultures and traditions. Each and every one of them is unique in its own way.
The poem ‘Nothing’s changed’ was written by Tatamkhulu Afrika in the year 1990. Afrika was born in the year 1920 in Egypt. He had quite a pale complexion as his father was an Arab and his mother was Turkish. When Tatamkhulu Afrika was a young child, he and his family moved to an area called ‘District Six’ in South Africa; Cape Town.
Afrika’s parents died during his childhood, so he was bought up by a white family of native South Africans.
‘Cape Town’ suffered lots of racism during the 1940’s – 1990’s. The country of South Africa was so strongly segregated into ethnic backgrounds that even new laws were placed to separate people according to their racial groups. This was called the Apartheid law and was introduced in the year 1990. Apartheid separated white, black, and coloured people in every area of life. This included: jobs, hospitals, transport, accommodations, public parks and even drinking fountains. However, this law was finally dismantled in 1993; three years after it was bought up.
Throughout the three years of the apartheid law, people from black backgrounds suffered the most. They were treated with unequal rights – all legally classified as the bottom less important people in life. On the other hand, whites were treated loyally and preciously: the total opposite to what black people experienced. People that were from different races but coloured were not classified at the same level as blacks, so they did not suffer as much. But the people from these coloured backgrounds were s...
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...ll, mean mouth’ maybe condensation left on the glass from the poet’s shocked expression. Alternatively, it could be the number zero: worthless, valueless and complete nothingness left.
At the end of the poem, Afrika becomes frustrated as he feels excluded. He wants to smash the glass of the restaurant with ‘a stone’ or ‘a bomb’. The word ‘shiver’ associates with the shattering glass. This language also allows the reader to suggest that Tatamkhulu Afrika is haunted by his past as it is an eerie and ghostly word.
Some readers may distinguish a hidden meaning to smashing down the glass. An alternative interpretation for this is that the poet could be yearning for the separation of whites and blacks in South Africa to shatter and for all of the conflict to end.
Maya Angelou is a singer, writer, poet and dancer that was born in the year 1928 in Southern America.
Angelou’s writings reflect who she was. We must learn who we are.
Maya Angelou is not just known for being a poet, novelist, educator, producer, actor, musician, and civil right activist, but also as one of the most renowned and influential voices. Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, and raised in Stamps, Arkansas. As a child, she had a passion for art. She attended public school in Arkansas and California, and won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor school. At the age of fourteen, Dr. Angelou dropped out of school and became the first female cable conductor. Dr. Angelou later went back and finished high school. A few weeks after she graduated from high school, she gave birth to her son Guy. Even though being a single mother and working different jobs would challenge her, her passion for music, dance, and poetry grew (Bloom).
For example, his use of negative imagery suggest that he has a drunk father. Hence in the first two lines of the poem. “ The whiskey on your breath
The title, When Broken Glass Floats, is a Cambodian proverb which means “a time when evil triumphs over good.” Him describes from beginning to end her intense journey for survival during her life in Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. She starts the book off with her peaceful life at home with her large, loving, and loyal family. The peacefulness quickly does a one-hundred and eighty degree turn once the Khmer Rouge takes over Him’s home land and the readers are introduced to the torture that she experiences. As Him and her family anxiously awaited in some refugee camps for their turn to migrate elsewhere on the globe, Him’s story takes her readers through the disease filled labor camps and abusive living conditions.
Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928. According to “Maya Angelou - Biography,” growing up, Maya had to deal with racism and discrimination towards African Americans. When she was young, she was very interested in arts and music, and as a teenager, Maya earned a dance and drama scholarship in San Francisco, California. When she was 14 years old, she dropped out of school and she worked many jobs to support her and her family (Maya Angelou - Biography). Poetryfoundation.org states that Maya finished high school when she was 17 years old and had her first son, Guy, not long after graduation (Maya Angelou).
“Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture”(www.mayaangelou.com, 2014).
Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1928 on April fourth. Throughout her life, she held
It describes how the conservative farmer follows traditions blindly and the isolated life followed by him. It reflects how people make physical barriers and that later in life come to their social life too. Where neighbor with pine tree, believes that this separation is needed as it is essential for their privacy and personal life. The poem explores a paradox in human nature. The first few lines reflect demolition of the wall, ?Something there is that doesn?t reflect love a wall? this reflects that nature itself does not like separation. The "something" referring to the intangible sense of social interaction. Furthermore "that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it" refers to Frost or to the author. Although the narrator does not want the wall, ironically, the mending of the wall brings the neighbors together and literally builds their friendship. An additional irony of the poem is that the only time these two neighbors sees each other is when they both mend the wall. The narrator sees the stubbornness in his neighbor, and uses the simile 'like an old-stone savage' to compare him to a stone-age man who 'moves in darkness', that is, set in his ways, and who is unlikely to change his views.
Before viewing the National Geographic Documentary “Apartheid’s Children”, I did not realize that even after the government was black majority ruled, numerous blacks are still living in deficiency. Subsequent to watching this short but evocative documentary, I now understand the immense gap between several blacks and how events in their lives have entirely changed their circumstances, and how this associates with creating their identity.
Maya Angelou was one of the great voices of great literature. As a poet, educator, historian, best-selling author, actress, civil rights activist, producer and director, she shared her great wisdom to others. “Within the rhythm of her poetry and elegances of her prose lies Angelou’s unique power helped readers of every organization span the lines of race and Angelou captivated audiences through the vigor and sheer beauty of her words and lyrics”. (Global Renaissance women, 2014).
The book has four metaphors, all of which have a significant part in the understanding of the novel. The first metaphor the readers encounter is the broken wine cask. The wine cask represents the plight of the poor and the blood of the revolution. The scene explicitly describes the people literally licking the streets and dripping the wine into the mouths of their children. The novel states, “Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish.” The novel also shows the wine cask as a metaphor for the blood of the revolution. The red color of the wine is similar to that of rich, red blood, shed by many because of the plight of the poor experienced in France. The second metaphor would be revealed as the grind stone. The grind stone, which was used to grind the food the poor needed so badly, later became used to sharpen the tools the poor would use to overthrow the government. The grindstone became a metaphor of killing and empowered poor throughout the novel. The third metaphor is the shadow. A shadow represents the great unknown, the great unexpected. Not a single person may prepare for the unknown. None of the characters could prepare for the events that came about in the plot, such as the denouncement of
So, I went to the next question, which asks what 밼ire?and 밿ce?symbolize and what the two meanings for 뱓he world?are. Line three of the poem led me to believe that there must be a connection between fire and desire. Desire makes sense because it can consume one's thoughts, goals, senses, and self-control like fire. I also decided that perhaps, ice represents hate. This is sensible because the phrase 밹old-hearted?is often associated with hate, which has the ability to freeze all other emotions. In addition, Frost, as most people would, takes preference with desire rather than hate. Therefore, through his life experiences, Frost must have determined that these two emotions, desire and hate, are just as destructive as their counterparts, fire and ice. Regarding Perrine뭩 other question, I believe that 뱓he world?means not only the Earth, but also the human race. This shows how the poem functions on two levels, with desire and hate destroying the human race, and fire and ice destroying the actual (physical) earth.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
South Africa really began to suffer when apartheid was written into the law. Apartheid was first introduced in the 1948 election that the Afrikaner National Party won. The plan was to take the already existing segregation and expand it (Wright, 60). Apartheid was a system that segregated South Africa’s population racially and considered non-whites inferior (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”). Apartheid was designed to make it legal for Europeans to dominate economics and politics (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”).
The apartheid was a very traumatic time for blacks in South Africa. Apartheid is the act of literally separating the races, whites and non-whites, and in 1948 the apartheid was now legal, and government enforced. The South African police began forcing relocations for black South Africans into tribal lines, which decreased their political influence and created white supremacy. After relocating the black South Africans, this gave whites around eighty percent of the land within South Africa. Jonathan Jansen, and Nick Taylor state “The population is roughly 78 percent black, 10 percent white, 9 percent colored, and l...