English Literature Poems

English Literature Poems

Compare the methods that ‘Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan’ employs

to highlight the importance of cultural identity with another poem?

I have chosen to compare ‘Presents’ and ‘Hurricane’ as both poems

highlight the importance of cultural identity in society. Both poets

‘Alvi’ and ‘Nicholas’ employ many different and similar methods to

illustrate the importance of cultural identity.

The poem ‘Presents’ is about the writer herself at a younger age

feeling insecure as she is of dual heritage (mixed race) ‘in my

English Grandmother’s dining - room. In the poem the poet begins to

conflict with herself as she believes that she is not of one set race

‘I was there of no fixed nationality’. Throughout the poem the poet

begins to show her insecurity as she begins to respond to the presents

her aunties bought her from her native land negatively ‘I could never

be as lovely as those clothes’. A t the end of the poem the Alvi is

unable to resolve her problem as she finishes the poem feeling rather

down saying ‘I was there of no fixed nationality’. The poem

‘Hurricane’ is rather similar in the way that it is again

autobiographical. In the poem the writer is also in conflict with

herself as she has left her motherland Guyana to move to England. At

first the poet dreaded England but as soon as there was news of a

Hurricane she began to feel much at home as hurricanes happen often in

the southern equator. The writer shows her relationship with the

hurricane by referring to it as her ‘sweeping a back home cousin’. At

the end of the poem the writer resolves her problem which is her

conflict with herself as she misses her homeland ‘Come to let me know

that the earth is the earth’. The similarities of the poems are that

they both involve the same situation which is conflict with another

culture.

Both poems ‘Presents’ and ‘Hurricane’ are autobiographical as ‘I’ is

used which is a first person pronoun. Even though the poem ‘Presents’

begins with the third person pronoun ‘They’ however the poet uses many

first person references such as ‘me’, ‘I’, and ‘My’. The poem

Hurricane also uses third person references such as ‘her’ which is

employed to distance the character. ‘Presents’ is structured to show

the conflict of the characters culture and identity. In each paragraph

each sentence is aligned differently however in ‘Hurricane’ it is

structured differently. In ‘Hurricane’ the poem is structured to show

to build up the climax. The first stanza shows the emotional

detachment of the author to the hurricane.