What have you learnt about different cultures from three poems you have studied?

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What have you learnt about different cultures from three poems you have studied?

You should consider the following:

  • The way people feel,
  • Problems in their cultures,
  • The good side of their culture.

Imtiaz Dharker author of ‘Blessing’ has written a descriptive poem, set in a hot country, where there is a shortage of water, as told in the opening lines of the poem where the human skin is compared to a seedpod, drying out till it cracks.  The poem is set in India, in a village where there is poverty.  We know that this because firstly there is a shortage of water, and secondly they live in huts.  In the last line the author describes the children with ‘their small bones’.  This could mean that there is also a shortage of food or it can also emphasis the size of the small children.  In line 18, when it says ‘and naked children’, this also shows us that they have no clothes or it can emphasise the need of water to wash.

‘Night of the Scorpion’ is a narrative poem written by Nissim Ezekiel.  In this poem he recalls “the night” his “mother was stung by a scorpion”.  The public in this poem are peasants that live in a village and are a rural community.  There culture is very superstitious as the peasants’ efforts to “paralyse the Evil One”, the scorpion.  The peasants believe that the scorpion’s movement makes the poison in the victim’s blood move.  

        Lawrence Ferlinghetti describes the American culture in “Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes.  He contrasts within the poem, the two sub-cultures in America, the rich and the poor.  These sub-cultures are shown to be very different from each other and very far apart.  The closeness we see in “Night of the Scorpion” is not show in this poem.  Ferlinghetti contrasts the people in various ways. The wealthy couple are on their way to the man's place of work, while the “scavengers” are coming home, having worked through the early hours.  The couple in the Mercedes are clean and cool; the scavengers are dirty.  But while one scavenger is old, hunched and with grey hair, the other is about the same age as the Mercedes driver and, like him, has long hair and sunglasses.

        In the ‘Blessing’, the “congregation: every man woman child” is very happy and delighted because they have received water and this is a very lucky day for them, as the pipe bursting is a mistake.  In the beginning of the poem they are all sad and anxious as they are When a pipe bursts, the flood which follows is like a miracle, but the “blessing” is ambiguous - it is such accidents which at other times cause the supply to be so little.

There are many religious beliefs in ‘Blessing’, as you can see straight away from the title, which emphasises how holy the water is to the people and that it is a blessing from God.   Many of the religious words are use to describe the water and to also symbolise the culture of the people living there.  The sound of the dripping water is referred to as ‘the voice of a kindly god’ in line 6, but then later on it is also referred to as ‘fortune and ‘silver’.  This is connected to God in the Hindu religion, because Hindus pray to wealth and fortune as a symbol of one of their goddesses.  ‘Fortune’ also emphasises on the importance of water to the people in the village.  In line 12 the crowd of people are called ‘a congregation’. A congregation can just mean 'a crowd of people', but its main meaning is 'a crowd of worshippers'.  

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‘Blessing’ has a single central metaphor that extends throughout the whole poem: giving of water as a ‘blessing’ from a ‘kindly god’.  Water is the source of other metaphors: fortune is seen as a ‘rush’ (like water rushing out of the pipe), and the sound of the flow is matched by that of the people who seek it – their tongues are a ‘roar’, like gushing water.  Water is likened to ‘silver’ which ‘crashes to the ground’, and light from the sun is seen as ‘liquid’ because of its reflection in the water.  

The layout of ‘Blessing’ is like ...

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