She also uses imagery in an extended metaphor to help the reader picture what she is going through, For example, she imagines that knowing two languages is like having “two tongues in your mouth” there are other extended metaphors in her poem like: “would rot” / “rot and die”, and “it grows back” in addition to “grows strong veins”. She compares the tongues/languages as plants because plants die in the wrong environment.
She shows us that this is her view partly from the words and also from the way she formats her poem. She changes the language half way through the poem into Gujarati. This shows us that she feels that her fading identity can be shown through a poem, and in Gujarati. She seems to think identity is very important and she shows her identity through her culture and when she is losing it over the foreign language/culture. Ranging from the English conversational start to the Gujarati middle and the explanation that she is losing her identity “ I think I have lost my mother tongue”. Which tells us her importance in identity in culture and language, had diminished with her mother tongue.
I think that this poem portraits a slowly fading language, and a writer who feels as if her identity is going with it. I think that the writer expresses her emotion over the situation in the poem, resulting in there being her mother tongue in there. From what the poem says she ends with a positive not saying, that when she is about to forget her magnificent language it blossoms out of her mouth.
In John Agard’s “Half Caste” the importance of the poem is shown in the comparisons of other situations, which are described as half-caste. The sarcasm also in a way shows how the writer feels being half-caste and the importance of being treated normally. The writer shows these things in comparison to normal things, which could be treated in a “half-caste” way for example “when yu say half-caste yu mean Tchaikousky sit down at dah piano an mix a black key wid a white key is a half-caste symphony/” this shows how other things could be treated as half-caste but aren’t.
The writer also decided that he would not use Standard English in this poem, how ever use his regional accented language (Caribbean). For example instead of ‘you’ he uses “yu” and instead of ‘the’ he uses “dah”. I think he chose to do this because he wants to show that this poem is all about the Caribbean people who are mixed race being branded as half-caste. And I think he has done this to show the reader the importance of his identity and of who he is, and where his roots come from.
The writer uses comedy in his poem to show people how the other things could be branded half-caste but aren’t. And he proves to you that you laugh at “half-caste weather” but you don’t laugh if someone calls a mixed race person a half-caste. This connects the reader to the subject, and this is also a way he shows you just how important being treated properly is and how important his own identity is to him. He also uses repetition, “explain yuself” this hits us, as he is talking directly to us as he is telling the readers to explain themselves when they says half-caste.
The writer is so upset about the way he is casted due to the colour of his skin he feels it is unfair. The writer explains that his identity is treated differently because of his skin. The importance of identity to him isn’t as important as getting his identity correct.
The argument of the poem comes out in the way it is written. E.g. a mixed language poem, it's a kind of English, but it's also in Caribbean. Which tells us it is about a mixed raced person. Which is what the poem is portraying, a mixed race man, who is branded half-caste. And he speaks up about it being a problem to him in a poem. Even in the poem he writes in a mixed way, which tells us, he has to let everyone know that mixed race is not half-caste. Also the humour, which the writer wrote, connects the problem to the reader in an easy to understand way. So the writer is showing how important his identity is to him, and how important it is to him that it is correctly described.
I think the argument was well described in the poem, and the writer was very clever to write his poem with humour in it, because that is what made the readers connect and understand the poem. And I also think that the identity of the writer as stated above is important to him, and also the fact of other people getting it right.
