The effect Nichols is trying to create of her imagery of both ther Carribean are so that she can illustrate an image of London and an image of the Carribean, in which the differences are greater than the personalities. The Carribean is described as the ideal place to live, quiet fishermen ‘going out to sea’ the sounds of ‘wild seabirds’ and the sound of the gentle ‘breaking and wombing’ of the sea in his head. Usually, for many people the sounds of steady sea is associated with calmness and serenenity, relaxing and quiet. It is apparent which Island Man would choose. When the image contrasts are that of a ‘dull’ and depressing London Day surrounded by more ‘dull’ and ‘grey’ concrete buildings, and the bright and beautiful Caribbean Island, it is clear that Island Man, and therefore Nichols prefers the Carribean, and feels happier living in the Carribean.
Another poem in which the theme of immigration, culture and identity is apparent is the poem written by Sujata Bhatt, ‘Search for my tongue’. In this Poem, Bhatt spoke of her struggle to fit in, in her new Home in America. She also speaks of her fear of losing her roots in India. ‘Search for my tongue’ is a personal and emotional poem about losing ones language and identity. It is about her own experience and her initial grief of having lost a part of herself that was a key of who she saw herself.
In the first part of the poem, the writer explores the idea of having two tongues in your mouth. The word ‘tongue’ can refer to both the body organ which we use for speech, and the language we speak with it. She includes this ambiguous word in her title, suggesting that she lost her ability to talk the language she used before her arrival in the new country. ‘I ask you, what you would do if you had two tongues in your mouth’ is used to include the reader in her poem, to make the reader feel empathetic of her situation. She talks about how problems arise when speaking her mother tongue in an environment where the ‘foreign tongue’ is used so frequently that the mother tongue will ‘rot and die in your mouth’ from no use.
The third part of the poem is an extended metaphor, written in Gujurati. This can be to show how hard it is living in a country where you couldnt speak or read the language. She uses the words ‘rot’, ‘die’ and ‘spit’ frequently, to emphasise how negative Bhatt felt about having lost her ‘tongue’. Bhatt uses these strong words to show the strong feelings of loss she felt at that time of identity crisis. She also adds an anglicised transcript to indicate sounds of the gujurati words, to help you read it. It also shows how the two ‘tongues’ are different. Which adds more emphasis on how Bhatt felt because it shows the great difference between the languages. This explains what she ment when she had said ‘ you could not use both of them together even if you thought that way.’, because their difference would make it hard for people to speak both languages together.
The last part of the poem is by far the most interesting part, it is the part where Bhatt describes her dream in which her mother tongue ‘buds out of her mouth’ and ‘pushes the other tongue aside’. This fact is also supported as the Gujurati is positioned at the core with English either side of it. This demonstrates that the English and Gujurati language are able to function together in the poem, and therefore are able to function together in her life. She put the Gujurati language in the core of the Poem to show that it is the center of her culture, and as if the gujurati really did push the english language ‘aside’. She did this show that both tongues can work together, contradicting her earlier statement about how they couldnt work together ‘even if you thought that way’.
As Bhatt describes rediscovering her lost tongue, feelings of Joy are very apparent. She describes her tongue to ‘bud’ out of her mouth, like a Flower, she talks about how it ‘grows strong veins’ that will help it implant itself in her mouth. Her mother ‘tongue ‘blossoms’ out of her mouth, after re-growing from a stump. Her ending, ‘Everytime I think I’ve forgotten, I think I’ve lost the mother tongue, it blossoms out of my mouth’, leaves a positive imprint on the readers minds, because at the end, she did find that even when she felt she was losing herself, she knew she can never really forget her culture.
As comparison to both, in each poem, alienation and cultural identity is the main theme. Both poets use startling imagery to illustrate their point and get their feelings across. In ‘Island Man’ Nichols talks about how he seems to dream of his ‘small emerald island’, and in ‘Search for my Tongue’, Bhatt discovers her true culture is brought alive in her dreams. This suggests that even though both writers felt that they have lost their culture completley, in their subconscious dreams it always returns. The similarities occur in both poems.
To conclude, both Bhatt and Nichols have clearly shown their feelings about immigration and about their new and strange surroundings they have to live in, and how they have to change to adapt to them. This change ment to Bhatt that her mother tongue slowly dwindles until she feels she cant speak it anymore. Nichols’ Island Man being forced to spent his live in a country he doesnt like, after dreaming of his homeland the Carribean. In my opinion, both poets semi-autobiographies tell alot about all the negative feelings people may harbour towards immigration. Since such a big part of this Country has at some point of their or their Parents live have lived in a whole different country. It shows the people who have lived here all their life how it felt to lose something so precious, it is described a ‘tongue’ in Bhatts poem and an ‘emerald’ in Nichols’s. The themes of cultural and personal identity were apparent throughout both poems and both poets had put their feelings across for the reader to understand. The idea of identity crisis is also beautifully potrayed by both writers, and in the end the motive of the poems was put across to show the reader how it really feels to lose something that identifies you with yourself.
