The poem begins with a conversational tone, which is appropriate as it is about language and communication. The first-person speaker addresses the reader, “you”, who has the question that prompts the rest of the poem. The speaker asks the reader to imagine having two tongues in your mouth; this is how Bhatt perceives the problem. The unconscious relation of language to the tongue is common, as it is one of the crucial organs we use when speaking. The speaker tells us that her “tongue” has been lost, but what she means is her original language has been lost. Used colloquially “lost my tongue,”(2) means that someone does not know what to say or is ‘tongue-tied’ (an image that will manifest itself graphically later in the poem). The notion of having two actual tongues in your mouth provides a sensation of equivalent strong discomfort felt by someone living in a foreign language environment. The nature of this discomfort is displayed in line 5-6. Her original language long atrophied from disuse, is what she feels comfortable with. The “foreign tongue” (7) that becomes her adopted voice is one that she has little command over. The imagery in lines 10-14 is quite shocking and grotesque. The mother tongue decaying, she imagines it might “rot and die in her mouth”(13), as the foreign language begins to consume her.
The middle section of the poem is written in Gujarati. This whole section occurs while she is dreaming. For most people reading this poem, Gujarati will be a dream-like language. It has exoticness and striking visual presence in comparison to the English alphabet that is the norm. The letters may look alien and foreign looking, but a clever use of irony is being employed here. This is her language. What it looks like to the English-only speaker is what English must have looked like to her. Another reason for the inclusion of the Gujarati section is that it gives a first hand representation of the two languages in her life. Looking at the curvaceous shape of the Gujarati letters, (although no credit to Bhatt) and comparing them to the angular nature of the English letters, one can visualise how her mother tongue can tie, “the other tongue in knots” (34). At her lowest when she feels that she is losing her identity, her language triumphantly asserts itself. That which is lost is found.
The poet develops her idea by using an extended metaphor; she compares her ‘tongue’ to a plant. The plant is a metaphor for the tongue, which itself has earlier been used as a (conventional) metaphor, for speech. Like a plant it, its rots and dies because it is in the wrong environment. But in her dreams it “grows”(31), it has the ability nurture itself and become “longer”(32) which could be an indication of her vocabulary expanding. The “strong veins”(32-33) show that her tongue is becoming vitalised and tougher. The extended metaphor helps the reader to appreciate the poet’s feelings of her original language. It shows that she prefers her own language, the beauty and spectacular nature of the flower blossoming compliments the beauty of her language.
The structure of the poem is very interesting. Bhatt represents her shared culture and language by the way the poem is presented on the page. The middle section of the poem is written in Gujarati. This is framed on either side by her English language. Therefore, the Gujarati voice is presented as a shared part of her English voice (and all of this is how the poem works as a poem, the medium. In this case the medium mirrors the message: the poem's presentation on the page, one voice within another, mirrors the significance of the poem).
This poem concerns itself with the predicament that Asians raised in the West find themselves with. Being part of both cultures and moving between two languages can sometimes mean that one genuinely feels part of neither. There is conflict between the original language and the language she has adopted in the foreign country and this represents the conflict between cultural identities. The search for the tongue that has been lost through neglect is therefore mirrored by the search for cultural identity.
In ‘Nothings Changed’, by Tatamkhulu Afrika, the speaker has returned to a deserted and desolate District Six, finding only the odd building indicating that white people now inhabit the area. District Six is (was) a famous residential district, situated at the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. It was a lively working-class neighbourhood, home to a large multi-cultural population. Many artists, musicians and other creative people lived there also. In 1966 the South African government declared District Six as a ‘whites only’ area, and began to evacuate the population. Over the years the complete area has been destroyed and physically deteriorated. It has never been redeveloped despites its prime location and is a key reminder of the apartheid years. (District Six Museum)
The poem depicts a society where the rich and the poor are divided. This division is parallel to the division between the whites and blacks. The vehicle that Afrika uses to illustrate this division is the place of eating. The “up-market”(22) inn that is “new”(22) is somewhere where the white people come to eat. It is described to be “brash with glass”(17). The use of “brash” signifies the mood of the speaker: anger. There is more pain and the feeling of exclusivity is magnified if he can see what is happening inside, the higher, richer standard of living that the white people enjoy and what he is being excluded from. He feels offended that proprietors of the restaurant want to maintain the racial divide. The sign “flaring like a flag”(18) reinforces the speaker’s rage. The crudeness is emphasised and it seems out of place. The harsh consonantal sounds of “flaring” and “flag” show also how the speaker feels. The building “squats”(19) is quite a comical image, but there is also the element of underlying rage ever present. Again the feeling that the inn does not really belong there is felt and the blunt consonants echo the poet’s anger. The elegance of the linen tablecloths and the tables each with a “single rose”(32) is contrasted with the common and grungy, “working man’s café”(34). It is not “haute cuisine”(23) that they serve but “bunny chow”(35) a cheap and filling take-away food eaten mainly by the poor. There is no formality or a worry about etiquette, no “linen”(31), but the food is eaten straight from a plastic top, and there is nowhere to wash one’s hands after eating: “wipe your fingers on your jeans”(48).
The speaker’s anger is a central to the whole poem. In stanza two Afrika achieves a shocking intensity by his line arrangement and repetition. The repetition of “and”(12-15) gives the impression of deep familiarity with the bureaucratic sounding “District Six” (9) and we can understand the sentiment “amiable weeds”(8) more clearly. The listing effect establishes a rhythm and a pattern, which the reader anticipates. This means that when “and”(15) turns into “anger”(16) it comes as a shock. The stanza also concentrates on the sensitive parts of his body, “skin…lungs…eyes”(13-16) all, which are subject and vulnerable to hurt. Anger is also associated closely with heat and fire. It is the “hot…anger of his eyes”(15-16); the sign of the restaurant is “flaring”(18) and his “hands burn”(45).
The image of “glass”(17, 30, 41, 47) is very important in the poem (the word appears four times) as well as a reference to “clear panes”(28). It is glass which shuts out the speaker in the poem. It is a symbol of the inequality between whites and blacks, rich and poor. The glass symbolises the exclusion of the blacks from the white’s world. But in the glass as well as looking in on outside, one can also see a reflection of oneself. The glass acting as a mirror means that it brings about a double traumatic experience. The speaker sees the standard of living that he has, the stains of “bunny chow” on his jeans, but he also sees the higher standard of living being enjoyed by his (now) equal countrymen. It is this injustice, which causes the speaker to yearn, “for a stone, a bomb, to shiver down the glass”(46-47). It is not the actual glass that he wants to smash; it is the racist mentality of those in power that he wants to shatter.
The poem’s title and last line suggests, “Nothing’s changed”(48). The speaker’s familiarity with this environment has not changed. Although there is no sign there, the poet can feel that he is in District Six, “…my feet know/and my hands.”(11-12) The gap in the standard of living has not shortened between the black and white people. There is still that element of exclusivity, “no sign says it”(25) as the apartheid is over, but there is a “guard at the gatepost”(23). The poet still feels the anger and violent rage towards those that exclude him. The title in this sense is ironic, physically everything has changed, the “Port Jackson trees”(21) threaten to take over and there is new restaurant whose patrons are exclusively white. However deep down the important matters and worthwhile changes have not taken place.
This leads to a sense of disappointment because an expected change has not happened. District Six has changed, but the speaker’s feelings have not because the new South Africa operates apartheid based on wealth. The poet reflects that despite the changing political situation, there are still huge inequalities between blacks and whites. The poem is a protest about the injustices of a system that allowed apartheid in the first place, but now does so little to improve the lives of the non-whites. Those in powerful and influential positions resist progress and deny justice to the common people.
The title, ‘Inglan is a Bitch’ is repeated as a refrain throughout the poem. The word “bitch” has many connotations, all of which are negative, so straight from the beginning the reader can intelligently guess that the poem criticises England. Black immigrants were brought to England to help alleviate the labour force after the Second World War; it was labelled as a country of many opportunities, a promise that turned out to be false. Literally a bitch is a female dog and they are noted for their hardworking nature. This could signify that in order to survive in England you have to be diligent also.
In Linton Kwesi Johnson’s, ‘Inglan is a Bitch’ the narrator is black immigrant worker, who describes his work history in England. He has worked in the “andahgroun”(2); has had “a lickle jab in a big ‘otell”(11) and in a crockery factory. All his jobs have been hard labour and menial work even at the age of “fifty-five”(42). He tells the reader that he was doing well while he was working as a “dish-washa”(11). This type of employment is quite unskilled and a job that most white Britons would consider beneath them. The poem dispels the myth that England has good economic prospects for everyone. Not only are the immigrants working very hard for a “lickle wage packit”(17), they are forced to pay high taxes also. (Employment)
In the 1950s and 1960s people from the Caribbean migrated to Britain in relatively large numbers. Most of these settled in cities, especially in the large English cities, and in most of these communities people from Jamaica were more numerous than people from other parts of the Caribbean. Although the Caribbean is made up of many different islands and mainland territories, including many where an English Creole is not spoken, British Black English is most similar to Jamaican Creole, because of the larger number of Jamaicans who settled in this country. (Sebba, Creole English and Black English)
The most striking element of this poem I felt was the sound of the poem. Written in a ‘Street Creole’ variety of dialect it forces the reader to read the poem with a different tongue; London is written as “Landan”(1). However this may also cause a problem with communication. It is hard in some sections to decipher what the poet is actually trying to say. A language barrier is formed. The tone of the poem is conversational, but it also has a musical, song-like quality. The rhyme scheme, rhythm and the beat all contribute to this Caribbean musical quality. There is also a refrain or in the context of a song, a chorus. The aural nature of the poem functions as a mirror for cultural identity. The style and speech represents Jamaica, but the context is in England.
The refrains in the poem are very interesting, “dere's no escapin' it”(5) is repeated in every other stanza along with “Inglan is a Bitch”. The speaker wants to escape, but cannot. The tone is resigned and there is not much hope. Because he has lived in England, he cannot even go back. This could be due to a fused identity and now he does not fit in either culture. “noh baddah try fi hide fram it”(16) The poet feels oppressed and has accepted defeat. The discrimination is ever-present. This next line is important, “a noh lie mi a tell, a true”(24) the speaker explains to the reader that he is not moaning or exaggerating, but is giving a accurate representation of his problems. “y'u haffi know how fi suvvive in it”(32) The verb used is survive, a harsher substitute for live. The speaker explains that life is not easy and the basics are hard to come by. “y'u bettah face up to it”(40) echoing line 16 the speaker tells us and tells himself to just accept the hardship. There is no point in denying or trying to change something more powerful. He has no options, as no one will even listen to his problems. This is why he is writing the poem, hoping this medium will reach out to those who can help him and understand his despair. “is whey wi a goh dhu 'bout it?”(56) The last line seems to invert the vibe given out in the lines above. There is a positive emphasis as the speaker asserts this question to his audience, who may be influential black people or sympathetic white people. The “wi” (we) is also only seen in the last line. It signifies collectiveness and unity for a particular purpose. On his own he is nothing, but through his poetry he may find people in similar predicaments and together they can bring about a change. Ending the poem with a question means that the poet is leaving the reader to make up his mind on the situation. The poem as well as reflecting the cultural identity of the black immigrants in England, also creates a mirror for national identity. It depicts to those in power what the condition of the Afro-Caribbean contingent is.
“It is sweet and glorious to die for your country.” This is the full translation of the phrase “Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.” Which comes from “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. The title of the poem is ironic. The poem does not so much induce pity as it does shock, especially for the civilians at home who believed war was noble and glorious. “Owen’s war poems are for civilians to make audible to them the authentic experiences of the arm.” (Kerr, p.219)
The soldiers are trudging back from the battle, a daunting depiction expressed through simile and metaphor. The men’s wretched condition is compared to “old beggars”(1), “hags”(2). The young men have grown unnaturally old and decrepit (Kerr, p.276). They cannot walk straight as their “blood-shod”(6) try to negotiate the mud. The words that Owen uses have different meanings beyond the real meaning and exploit ambiguity, for example, “distant rest”(4), what kind of rest? In line 8 the rhythm slackens as a particularly dramatic moment approaches.
In Stanza two, the action focuses on one man who couldn’t get his gas helmet on in time. Lines 12-14 consist of a powerful underwater metaphor, with succumbing to poison gas being compared to drowning in a “green sea”(14). “Flound’ring”(12) is what they’re already doing (in the mud) but here it takes on more gruesome implications as Owen introduces himself into the action through witnessing his comrade dying in agony.
From straight description Owen looks back from a new perspective in the light of a recurring nightmare. Those “haunting flares”(3) in stanza one foreshadowed a more terrible haunting in which a friend, dying, “plunges at me”(16) before “my helpless sight”(15), an image Owen will not forget. Owen experiences a “feeling of anguished responsibility” (Kerr, p.41). “The face was a projection of his own imagination and unspoken urges, arousing guilt, fear, and helplessness” (Kerr, p.226).
Another aspect again marks Stanza four. Owen attacks those people at home who uphold the war’s continuance unaware of its realities. If only they might experience Owen’s own “smothering dreams”(17) which replicate in small measure the victim’s sufferings. Those sufferings Owen goes on to describe in sickening detail.
One can almost feel the panic that causes a dying man to be “flung”(18) into a wagon, the “writhing”(19) that denotes an especially virulent kind of pain. Hell seems close at hand with the debauched simile “like a devil’s sick of sin”(20). Then that “jolt”(21) intensifies the agony. Lane is critical of this last stanza; he feels “sense of uneasiness at the unrelenting piling up of horrific images”
Some tongues were anything but “innocent”(24) in Owen’s opinion. His appeal to “my friend”(25) is doubtless ironic, whose adopted creed, the sweetness of dying for one’s country he denounces as a lie, which children should never be exposed to, just as the gas should never be exposed to the young men, some of them children in their own right.
There is only one antidote to poison and madness. The soldier’s body is ruined, his lungs “froth-corrupted”, because of the lies he has ardently imbibed. The only way to stop the ruin of countless bodies is by stopping corruption at its verbal source, “the old lie”, which is why the true poet must be truthful. (Kerr, p.97)
In the definition of a mirror in the introduction, one keyword was ‘faithfully’. A point that should be made about the poetry acting as a mirror and mirrors in general is that everything depends on the individual, culture or nation looking into the mirror. The reflection of the mirror can be interpreted in many ways. And so the significance of the poem may not be a faithful conclusion, but one that is open to discussion. The words on the page do not change and the image in the mirror is constant, it is the reader and the individual who comes to the mirror and the poem with his or her own ideas and experiences that shapes the sense of a poem.
Although the poetry may create a mirror that does not lie, it is the cultures or countries that must decide if they want to take into account what the meaning of the poem is. Do they want to change in the light of the revelation that poetry has the power to make? It is the responsibility of the artists; in this case the poets to present the truth as they see it. However the greater burden lies upon the reader or the public. They must analyse the poems, whilst firstly keeping in mind the biases of the poet and secondly realising that they too have a predisposition and are subjective. Only then can they reach some kind of objectivity and only then can they attain some sort of truth, which is the primary purpose of a mirror.
Works Cited
