Comparing Nothing's Changed and Charlotte O'Neil's Song
Both poets are protesting about the injustices and inequalities of
their own respective cultures.
In "Nothing's Changed" Afrika protests about the differences in the
way that black and white people are treated in South Africa. The poem
illustrates how, although the South African apartheid system was
abolished in the early 1990s nothing had really changed beyond
paperwork. Afrika was once quoted in an interview as saying
"We may have a new constitution, we may have on the face of it all a
beautiful democracy, but the racism in this country is widespread. We
try to pretend to the world that it does not exist but it most
certainly does, all day long, every day, shocking and saddening and
terrible."
He reinforces these feelings in his poem.
He begins the poem in a calm mood. He describes his walk down the path
towards district six in a calm, almost leisurely way.
When he reaches district six the sense of calm leaves and the anger in
the poem starts to become apparent. He talks about how there is no
sign to show the name of the area but he can feel it.
"No board says it is:
But my feet know,
And my hands,
And the skin about my bones,
And the soft labouring of my lungs,
And the hot, white, inwards turning
Anger of my eyes."
It would seem that he does not have good memories of this place. His
immediate change of mood as he nears district six seems to show his
feelings towards the area.
We start to get the feeling that whatever has happened here has
affected him deeply and personally.
Afrika is outraged by the hidden racism in his country. Even though by
law black, white and coloured people are considered equal in practise
quite the reverse is true.
In the poem he describes a white's only inn. He uses quite harsh
language in his description.
"Brash with glass,
Name flaring like a flag,
It squats,
In the grass and the weeds
Incipient Port Jackson trees:
New, up-market, haute cuisine,
Guard at the gate post,
Whites only inn"
There is a lot of personification in this description. The word brash
suggests the arrogance of the place. The name flaring like a flag is
suggestive of the inn displaying its conquest of the area. Simply by
being there Afrika feels that the inn has committed a great atrocity
as it is a place where a coloured man would obviously not be welcome
even in the absence of apartheid. The word squats I think is not as
though it were sitting but as though it were occupying the land
illegally. Incipient literally means imported.
The above statement is somewhat mind-boggling. It is something that a revolutionist might have coined over 200 years ago and it leaves much to the imagination. It is about as close to being treasonous as one could get without actually committing the crime. The former Vice-President Albert Gore once stated that "the constitution was a living breathing document, open to change". His statement was quite controversial and it definitely created a stir with the patriot-cult crowd. Why would anyone want to scrap the entire Constitution of the United States of America? Has someone come up with a more impressive document that better signifies what this country is all about?
Although he is filled with misery, he feels a moment of peace and tranquility when he becomes surrounded by the beauty of nature.
In the first stanza, it is established that the poem is written in the first person, when “I” is referring to the speaker, which illustrates this person’s point of view concerning the tragedy of 9/11 during a whole day of events. The speaker begins by setting a tranquil mood as the opening of a long list of last names. In line 1, he says: “Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.” He describes the night like a tropical tree gently swaying in a peaceful beach setting. He calmly observes the gentle raindrops dripping slowly down his windows until they disappear in “A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze, / And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,” (2-3). For a brief moment, he enjoys going outside to his garden at sunrise to forget the sorrow that death brings when “In the morning, I walked out barefoot / Among thousands of flowers” (11-12).
Downhill often has connotations of degradation and immorality but this omen is ignored as it is rendered immaterial by the easy decent offered by the downhill path. The poem continues in its promisingly upbeat tone into the second stanza as it appears that the promise of the downhill path has come into fruition. ‘The two ease together in glowing august weather’ both the words ‘glowing’ and ‘together’ have exceptionally positive connotations. The air has a distinct sweetness as even the natural world seems to lead the couple down the road with ‘the honey breathing heather’ that lay to their left and right make it appear as though the air is thick with sweetness. While the repetition of the ‘h’ sound gives the poem an airy quality and reminds the reader of the alliteration of ‘west wind’ again drawing attention to the way the natural world appears to be encouraging the couple. ‘Her swift feet seem to float’, the soft alliteration of the ‘f ‘adds to the feeling of ease and floating while the repetition of the ‘t ‘sound at the end of each word adds to the quickness of the decent as the words are
...s darkness which is displayed as his shadows. Slipping into silence is like someone slowly slipping in through a door into a room but then, as if surprised, there is a cry or a yell. As the man trails, or follows, the music gets more and more quiet until it is as faint as a small sigh. At the end of the poem, the quiet noise is like when an accordion is folded into its box and makes a faded noise.
becomes slightly more serene and peaceful. Here, the tone of the poem is changed to a
"Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."
Writing the poem in ballad form gave a sense of mood to each paragraph. The poem starts out with an eager little girl wanting to march for freedom. The mother explains how treacherous the march could become showing her fear for her daughters life. The mood swings back and forth until finally the mother's fear overcomes the child's desire and the child is sent to church where it will be safe. The tempo seems to pick up in the last couple of paragraphs to emphasize the mothers distraught on hearing the explosion and finding her child's shoe.
...smile”; however, after listening to the introduction about every pen from the girl, the boy’s voice “filling with fear”. This marked contrast indicates the speaker’s impatience, and the audience can feel the development of the story clearly. If the attitudes of the speaker remained the same throughout the poem, it will create a lack of movement so that the audience cannot relate to the speaker.
“In this poem, the night represents his destination — the poet’s own inner life, possibly self-knowledge. The poet, then, feels at least partially alienated from himself in much the same way that the night promotes a feeling of alienation from other people” (Kidd 2). Therefore, the reader can assume this rest of the poem is going to be about the narrator getting to know his place in this world while he is on a night stroll. The second line of stanza one states “I have walked out in rain –and back in rain” (Frost 157). His repetition of going in the rain twice emphasizes his miserable condition on this dark, rainy night. Nonetheless, he embraces nature and continues on with his walk past “the furthest city light” which tells the reader that he is now in complete darkness. Stanza two focuses primarily on his relationship with society. The narrator is casually walking in the city at night and sees the “saddest city lane” and
“I sometimes speak from the last thing that happened to me. I got asked today if I think up poems. Do I think them up? How do I get the right one? Well, it is the hardest thing in the world to tell. But I don’t think up poems. I pick up a lot of things I thought of to make a poem; that is a lot of scattered thoughts through the days that are handy for the poem-that’s about all. That’s where the thinking comes in.”
The tone of the poem is described as a weary, self-depressed outlook. He is uncertain about life and his place in it. T.S Eliot uses the
The poem is launched by a protracted introduction during which the speaker indulges in descriptions of landscape and local color, deferring until the fifth stanza the substantive statement regarding what is happening to whom: "a bus journeys west." This initial postponement and the leisurely accumulation of apparently trivial but realistic detail contribute to the atmospheric build-up heralding the unique occurrence of the journey. That event will take place as late as the middle of the twenty-second stanza, in the last third of the text. It is only in retrospect that one realizes the full import of that happening, and it is only with the last line of the final stanza that the reader gains the necessary distance to grasp entirely the functional role of the earlier descriptive parts.
... is simply taking a stroll trough the woods because he says in line 13, "I kept the first for another day," which leads me to believe that the next time he is walking in those woods he'll take the first path. I guess that Frost did his job because this poem has caused so much controversy and debates over the years. I just can't really fathom that this path was the meaning of life in a way.
Towards the end of the poem , he starts sounding like the optimistic Hughes we all have come to know and love.