Compare the way that Tatamkhulu Afrika and Arun Kolatkar show the relationship between people in their environment in Nothing Changed and Old Woman.

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Compare the way that Tatamkhulu Afrika and Arun Kolatkar show the relationship between people in their environment in Nothing Changed and Old Woman

In the following essay I will endeavour to compare the two poems. 'Nothing's Changed', by Tatamkhulu Afrika and An Old Woman by Arun Kolatkar. I will specifically look at the theme as well as relationship between people and their environments.

The poem, 'Nothing's Changed,' is about a poet that returns to the wasteland that was once his home, and relives the anger he felt when the area was first destroyed. This is described in stanzas 1and 2. In stanza 3' the narrator of the poem sees a new restaurant: expensive, stylish, and exclusive, with a guard at the gatepost' alliteration on the g sounds emphasises harsh feeling towards white culture. He thinks about the poverty around it, especially the working man's café nearby, where people eat without plates from a plastic tabletop. This makes him reflect that despite the changing political situation, there are still huge inequalities between blacks and whites. Even though South Africa is supposed to have changed, he knows the new restaurant is really 'whites-only 'line 24. He feels that nothing has really changed. The voice of the poem is the poet's voice and it is angry in tone. This continuous through out. The deep anger he feels makes him want to destroy the restaurant - to smash the glass with a stone, or a bomb. 'Nothing's Changed' is an angry poem. It was written in the 1960s, when South Africa's policy of apartheid (or separate development) the government declared District 6 a 'whites only' area, and began to evacuate the population. Over a period of years the entire area was raised to the ground. Most of it has never been built on. The poem was written just after the official end of apartheid. It was a time of hope - Nelson Mandela had recently been released from prison, and the ANC was about to become the government of South Africa, yet wee see the bitterness that still 'nothing's changed'.
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The poem 'An Old Woman,' is about a common enough experience, the experience of misjudging someone. A tourist is approached by an old beggar-woman she is reduced to asking for money; she offers to show him one of the tourist sights in Jejuri, 'the horseshoe shrine'. He tries to shrug off her attentions and finds her very annoying. Most of the poem is about the middle class person. The woman pleas with him. Yet he now cannot ignore her. There is only one line where the old woman speaks 'What else can an old woman do on hills ...

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