‘….wakes up to the sound of blue surf in his head the steady breaking
and wombing….’
The man in question in the poem is even called island man, implying that locally at least he is known as the island man. This is a lot different to his Caribbean homeland, where he would be known as ‘the carpenter’ or ‘the fisherman’. The communities are closer knit that in England, where everyone has their own particular skill. If, for example, someone needed a chicken to be shot they would call out the farmer or the butcher. In England we don’t have this luxury and we need to actually pay for services.
Search for my Tongue starts on a very different note and immediately asks the reader questions about what it would be like to learn a different language. This is true of the whole poem, which, it could be argued, maintains an aggressive tone all the way through. Later on the poem gets very aggressive not in tone, but in the image it portrays and the impact it has. For example:-
‘You ask me what I mean by saying I have lost my tongue. I ask you
what you would do if you had two tongues in your mouth….’
This first portion of the poem can be interpreted differently, depending on the way the narrator reads it or the way that you feel. If it were to be read aloud (like it was written to be) then, to be aggressive you could but emphasis on certain words, especially the ‘you’s making the listener feel more vulnerable.
The next sign of displacement in Island Man is when, in the second stanza, the poet describes the morning on a Caribbean island. It is obviously not England as we don’t have wild seabirds or fishermen anymore. They died, along with traditional Britain when we voted in Socialists after the war. They let people from all different backgrounds into our country without speaking a word of English. This trend has continued and is at an all time high as we speak. For example:-
‘….wild seabirds and fishermen pushing out to sea the sun surfacing
defiantly from the east of his small emerald island….’
To start with in the centre of London one can rarely see the sun not always because it is not out but the many overbearing buildings shield its rays. London is one of the most architecturally developed cities in the world. As a result wild birds could not survive in such an unfriendly environment. The majority of birds that survive in London are mere vermin for example pigeons. Over the years the Thames has become more and more polluted and many fish have now died or moved to safer waters.
It is interesting that the poet that wrote Search for my Tongue has also used the environment in the poem. The final stanza describes how the mother tongue is like a tree. It starts out as a shoot. It grows taller and wider, eventually taking over and overpowering the foreign tongue.
‘… it grows back, a stump of a shoot grows longer, grows moist, grows
strong veins, it ties the other tongue in knots, the bud opens,
the bud opens in my mouth, it pushes the other tongue aside.
everytime I think I’ve forgotten, I think I’ve lost the mother
tongue, it blossoms out of my mouth.’
This is an example of displacement in Search for my Tongue. The mother tongue displaces the foreign tongue and takes it over. This is the only reference to displacement in the poem.
Island Man is his dreams portrays his Caribbean Island as being pure and idyllic. However it is different from his reality. London is nowhere near idyllic and not pure compared to the island. This is in stark contrast to Search for my Tongue where the mother tongue is portrayed as a grotesque and disgusting object. The writer wishes to spit it out and get rid of it for good but she can’t as it always stays with her sub-consciously.
The next stanza in Island Man is where the island man begins to wake up and smell another London day.
‘Comes back to sand of a grey metallic soar to surge of wheels
to dull North Circular roar….’
This shows that he has his thoughts disturbed every morning by the cars on the North Circular. It is this that awakes him and stops him from reliving his island life.
This is in contrast to Search for my Tongue where the poet’s feelings continue uninterrupted throughout the whole poem. She is allowed to tell her story without being broken up by passing traffic or people.
Both work in their own ways to great effect. The break in Island Man is good because it help to change from one beautiful scene to an unexciting one.
Finally in Island Man the writer reveals that the sound mentioned in the first stanza was not wave but his pillow. It has no particular ending. Search for my Tongue is an absolute difference in that it has a clearly defined ending. The poet closes on the note that the tongue has reappeared.
