Compare Sujata Bhatt's Search for my tongue poem, with Grace Nichols' Hurricane Hits England, and decide whether or not having one or more culture can be a positive experience.

Authors Avatar

In both poems, Search For My Tongue and Hurricane Hits England, the authors are talking about being caught having more than one culture. We can see this from many different perspectives. First, where they begin to explain their story and trauma in short concentrated pieces of text and secondly where it shows that they are quite obviously unhappy and confused about their life. Evidence for this in Search For My Tongue is in lines three to six where she says ‘I ask you, what would you do if you had two tongues in your mouth, and lost the first one, the mother tongue and could not really know the other’ this tells us that she is very confused, desperate and would take help of anyone, it also tells us that she is unsure about what plan of action to take next. Evidence for this theory in Hurricane Hits England is where she says ‘it took a hurricane to bring her closer, to the landscape, half the night she lay awake’, this also shows us that in her story and experiences, she has deep thought about her situation and problems. this one theory doesn’t itself show us that there may be a positive experience  right now, but what it does show us and hint to us is that the poem may follow on and tell us a different outcome, slightly more positive if we were to guess, I gathered this when she said ‘it took a hurricane to bring her closer’ this is both a positive and a negative thing due to the fact that it shows us that she has had a negative experience but the outcome has been positive in her perspective and opinion. I have also thought this because this is just the start of the poem and in both poems, the topics change quite frequently, which gives us an insight into believing that anything could happen. Furthermore, it shows us that also, with the strong range of writing techniques, it is used in a way to show us that the topic is uncomfortable for her to discuss/write about, using paradox, metaphors, similes and more.

Join now!

        I think that in both poems, the authors seem extremely stressed and desperate for us to straight away realise what they are going through, because for them, this is a huge problem, they know their difficulties and problems in and out and basically, we don’t; we are only just reading it and have no idea about anything they are going through. They write in such an assertive manner, the reader straight away realises that the writers in a way expect us to know their situation as well as they do, just from reading a short poem. The evidence for this ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Here's what a star student thought of this essay

Avatar

The Quality of Written Communication is below average, but there are no moments where the candidates answer becomes ambiguous and a challenge to read. The main issues are the lack of care for the standards of objective, analytical writing, such as capitalising the words of the title of a published piece of writing and enclosing the title in inverted commas like so - 'Search For My Tongue' / 'Hurricane Hits England'. It is not acceptable to see "Search for my tongue" written as this is not adhering to the rules of Standard English. Elsewhere, there could be a greater range of more complex punctuation used as this greatly improves the confidence of the answer.

The poems selected lend themselves well to the question, and their is a good focus demonstrated throughout the answer, with the candidate identifying a number of poetic devices used to convey the positives about have dual nationality. I would argue though, that there is a lot said but very little proved. To focus more discreetly on what the question is specifically asking can be challenging, but it's where the most marks lie, and so a good level of understanding when it comes to structuring an analytical response is a prudent precaution. Use the PEE (Point, Evidence & Explanation) structure if you have trouble with this, because this answer would be so much better if there were quotes used as evidence from the poems as statements like this: "it is used in a way to show us that the topic is uncomfortable for her to discuss/write about, using paradox, metaphors, similes and more. (sic)" do not win any marks as it is barely even considered feature spotting - the candidate must provide evidence for each poetic device listed and analyse its effect on the reader and how well it conjures up thoughts that dual nationality can be a positive experience. This latter task is imperative, because the candidate must tie the analysis back to the question otherwise risk being marked down as being too general in their analysis.

This answer is in receipt of a question on how dual culture can be a positive experience. The question prescribes the poem 'Search For My Tongue' by Sujatta Bhatt, and the candidate has chosen an apt comparative poem, 'Hurricane Hits England', by Grace Nichols. The focus is extremely good, but a question mark is raised over the extent to which the analysis is wholly effective considering the lack of appropriate quoting. Nonetheless, there is a very good understanding of the emotions of the poets as they speak to the reader in their respective poems.