Two Scavengers and Nothings Changed both use language and layout to convey the writers ideas about class differences.

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Compare how language and layout are used to convey meaning in ‘Two Scavengers and A Truck’ and one other poem.

‘Two Scavengers’ and ‘Nothing’s Changed’ both use language and layout to convey the writers’ ideas about class differences.  ‘Two Scavengers’ is set in ‘downtown San Francisco’ and it serves as a snapshot of ‘scavenger’ and an ‘elegant couple’ held at a red traffic light and being caught in the same time and place despite their class differences.   It very much emphasises the fantasy and reality of the American Dream; despite it being a commonly held belief, only few achieve such wealth.  

Similarly, ‘Nothing’s Changed’ also considers a class divide this is not only based on wealth but the effects of racial segregation under Apartheid still being felt long after its end.  Therefore, the appearance may have changed but the reality has not as illustrated in the lines, ‘District Six. / No board says it is: / but my feet know…’   Afrika can sense that this was once the integrated zone.  He uses short sentences and statements to build his anger.  Also, these two lines are separated in order for them to stand out, signalling, as stated, that this is District Six.  

Afrika’s poem is one of protest and anger; this is illustrated at the beginning with the sensory imagery of, ‘small, round, hard stones click.’  These short, sharp, monosyllabic words reflect the feel of the stones (perhaps the remnants of the bull-dozed District 6).  Later in the poem when his anger has mounted: Hands burn / for a stone/ a bomb.  Again, monosyllabic words are used to create short, hard phrases that reflect his anger.  In contrast, the tone in ‘Two Scavengers’ is rather detached; whereas Afrika is writing from personal experience in the first person; Ferlignhetti writes in the third person as he’s watching the classes from a distance.  Therefore, he adopts a detached tone.

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Language and layout function to show a division between the classes or people presented.  This occurs in the form of contrasts and alternating lines in ‘Two Scavengers’, whereas ‘Nothing’s Changed’ uses a physical division of separate two columns to contrast the white and black Africans and the places they inhabit.  For example, the punned ‘whites only inn’ reflects that only well-off white people can enter the restaurant that ‘squats’ on District 6 a place once integrated then racially segregated is so once again.  The use of  the metaphor ‘squats’ shows the division as this phrase appears some inhabiting a ...

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