Compare Poem 1 "The Weeding Gang" by C.E.J Ramchariter-Lalla and Poem 2 "They Walked and Talked" by C. Uche Okeke

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Moi Dafydd 10 Tegid          GCSE Coursework           12th   October 2004

Task: Compare Poem 1 “The Weeding Gang” by C.E.J Ramchariter-Lalla and Poem 2  “They Walked and Talked” by C. Uche Okeke

    The two poems that I am going to compare are, “The Weeding Gang” by  C.E.J Ramchariter –Lalla (poem one) and “They Walked and Talked” by C. Uche Okeke (poem two).  

    The first poem is seen from the viewpoint of the poet, it’s his feelings and what he hears that is important, “I know”, “I hear” and “I love.”  In the second poem the viewpoint is hidden, the poet doesn’t make it obvious that he’s watching these women, and this makes you forget that he’s describing a scene that he sees.  Poem one is about a group of women going weeding, we can prove this because they are carrying cutlasses, “Cutlasses a-tingling”, and in addition the title is “The Weeding Gang”, while poem two is about “dames” returning from a “distant mart” with “baskets on heads”.

    Similar to each other the two poems are set in a poor part of the world, I think that the first poem is set in a poor part of the world because they are using cutlasses which they wouldn’t be using in a developed country, and possibly it might have been in Africa because of the words, “Kheesaz and boojhowals” and also the poets name “C.E.J. Ramcharitar-Lalla”.  I think that the second poem is also set in Africa because of the phrase “swept like a great Saharan wind”, and the Sahara is in Africa, also they have “baskets on their heads” and they have walked a long journey -modern transport is used to travel in the developed world.  The two poems are also set in the countryside because there is a silence in the first poem, (a town would be noisy).  In the second poem, nature is mentioned in abundance, “croaking of the toad” and “the songs of the birds”.

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    What’s similar to both poems is that they both portray women as doing nothing but talking and walking, reinforcing the old age belief that women do nothing but “gossip” and have “idle silly talking”.  The first poem especially uses words associated traditionally with women, e.g. “gentle”, “saucepans”, “graces” and “charming”.  These adjectives and words would not be used if he were describing men.  The first poem describes women as “girls” and the second poem as “dames”, with the second therefore seemingly having more of a regard for the women.  

    The two poets use onomatopoeia ...

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