Poems from other cultures
"Poems from other cultures" Both poems, 'Hurricane hits England' and 'Search for my tongue' explore the importance of feeling confident with your identity. Furthermore, how it seems to have changed once they settled in another country, facing modern cultures. The arrival of a hurricane in England, which tends not to occur usually triggers thoughts about the writer's experiences/life in the Caribbean, on the other hand. The opening line from 'Hurricane hits England' shows that the poet has triggered thoughts about her past. This makes her reflect about life at home in the Caribbean. The following two lines, "Half the night she lay awake, the howling ship of the wind", I believe she is using the ship as a metaphor to show how the storm carries memories. I also think she is reflecting on when a ship carried her from her homeland when she may have been vulnerable due to slavery in the past one-two centuries. Later she says, "Like some dark ancestral spectre, fearful and reassuring". This is very contradictory; also known as a paradox. The second stanza the poet's mood, changes she is rather abrupt with short instructions to African gods, this is highlighting her culture as well. This changes to the first person after the first verse, which could mean she is closer to herself and being pretty reflective. Furthermore, the third and fourth stanzas start out asking rhetorical
Poetry from other cultures.
Theme: Poetry from other cultures. Texts: John Agard and Moniza Alvi. Task: John Agard 'in 'Half Caste' and Moniza Alvi in 'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan' both deal with the issues of being born of mixed marriages. 'Half Caste' and 'Half English'. Write about the different ways in which the past explore what this means to them. John Agard and Moniza Alvi have two different attitudes in there poetry about there mixed racial backgrounds. John Agard uses a very proud attitude as on the hand Moniza Alvi is very unsure about her personal identity. It is not just there attitude towards there mixed background but there style of there written poetry is also different. Through examining the text and reading the poem it is clear that they are two different people with very different approaches to life. There writing techniques are different as John Agard uses his own rules when he writes, as Moniza Alvi sticks to the correct English grammar and spelling. John Agard's poem is very different to Moniza Alvi's poem, they talk about the same issues concerning race, but they have do not have the same views on there own race. John Agard is very proud of his mixed racial origin, and in the poem says that it is not clever and makes a mockery of people who discriminate him, he is proud to be who he is. He uses a very powerful name for his poem 'Half
Poetry from other cultures
Poetry from other cultures Compare and contrast the notions of culture and identify in 'Half-caste' by John Agard and 'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan' by Moniza Alvi. The poems I have chosen to analyse are 'Half-Caste' by John Agard and 'Presents from my aunts in Pakistan' by Moniza Alvi. I have decided to focus on these poems because I believe they project strong messages and discuss the issues of identities and mixed race. Furthermore, both poems are autobiographical and the poets are from different cultures to each other. As readers, it is very interesting to understand their different views about mixed race backgrounds as we are from a different culture to them. John Agard is a respected Caribbean poet who has won the Paul Hamlyn Award in 1997. On the other hand, Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and has achieved the Poetry Business Prize in 1991. Both poets confess the difficulties of living in different cultures and not knowing their fixed nationality. John Agard was born on 21 June 1949 in Guyana. His mother was white and Portuguese but his father was a black Englishman, therefore making him half-caste. He began to write poems at the age of sixteen and many were published in the school magazine. In the 1970's he moved to England where he not only progressed to become a literary poet but also moved on to develop into a performing poet. From there, he has
Pride And Prejudice
Lauren Slyman Pride and Prejudice We were placed in groups within our class and we had to speak about the marriage we wanted to. The marriage I chose to talk about was between Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins. Elizabeth Bennet was Charlotte's best friend and this is how we know her in the novel. I said that the couple had not got married for love, but instead Charlotte needed money and Mr. Collins wanted a wife and that was the only reason they were together. I saw that in the book Mr. Collins first proposed to Elizabeth, but when she said no he had to find a new wife. I said that because Charlotte desperately needed a husband she aid yes. The reason she needed this man was because she was a burden to her parents. When he had asked her it was a way out, he was a rich man who could support and who also needed a wife so she said yes. I said that Charlotte was a very sensible woman as she was in her late twenties and still had no husband. Although I believe it was sad that she had to marry someone she didn't love, I can see how she had to do it in order to have someone who cared for her and also someone who had money to offer her. I said her best friend did not agree as she was not as sensible about marriage as Charlotte was. She thought marriage had to be based on love and that the people who were to be married had to love one another. As she thought this I said that she
pre 1914 prose
Pre 1914 prose "Great expectations" Great Expectations written by a famous man called Charles dickens. "Great expectations" is a famous and tense novel which was first published in the year 1860 to 1861 every fortnight in a magazine called all year round. The plot is based on a young boy called "Pip", who in the first chapter meets and odd fellow in a gloomy, dark cemetery, pip walks on and soon finds himself turned upside down bye an ex-convict who threatens pip at the throat that he would cut out his heart and his liver if pip dose not do as he says. This dark gloomy fellow scares pip which makes you sympathize for pip. In chapter 8, pip is at a house with his mean sister and her kind and caring blacksmith husband Joe. As pip is a working class orphan he has no parents just is evil sister. Then a rich old, creepy women called Miss havishem asks pip to come round and to play, as he doesn't want to, his sister forced him. When he arrives he ends up in a room with no external light only candles and a dead like figure who demands him to play is Miss Havishem, she demands him to play with her beautiful older then pip daughter, Estella, whom pip falls in love with, you feel sorry for pip now because he cant get her because she is upper class and he is garbage to her. In chapter one, Dickens sets the scene by describing the marshes, saying it is an open dark place and that's
Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan
Introduction The poem " Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan" is about a young girl called Monzia Alvi, which additionally is the writer. She emphasises about her clothes and jewellery that her aunts have sent over from Pakistan. In her writing conveys an image of self-confidence and ambivalent about her self. The structure and language of this poem is spread out across the page to make the reader read the poem slowly. The have to read it loud as well to emphasis the image and to give a better feel and understanding. For example "I longed for denim and corduroy" This is read slowly to create an image to the reader that she is sad or homesick and ambivalent. However the language is a sequence of personal memories. It could be seen as repetition because she brings us back to the image of her memorise and sadness of her culture or background. The poet is clever because she illustrates that she can contrast her images to sadness and homesick for example "But often I admired the mirror-work tried to glimpse myself in the miniature glass circles, recall the story how the three of us sailed to England" This shows or conveys that she is homesick and confused, but her clothes remind her of her culture and reminiscing on her good times she had with her aunts. However she gives an imagery of her clothing or traditional name for example " Salwar Kameez" This is an example
Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan - review
Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan, is a twentieth century autobiographical poem. It is about a girl who is trying to decide whether she wants to adapt to the Pakistani way of living and dressing or stay with the English tradition. Although born in Pakistan, Moniza Alvi was brought up in England, the daughter of a Pakistani father and an English mother. This poem explores the dilemma of divided culture, divided families and a 'self' that feels the pull of somewhere else. Moniza Alvi finds it tough to decide between her own culture and the place where she has spent most of her life. Its hard for her to make her mind up and she has ambivalent feelings, and feels confused as there is both a good side and bad side to living in both countries 'England' and 'Pakistan'. The clothes that Moniza Alvi receives from her Aunts are very beautiful and she admires them but they make her feel as though she is not good enough to wear the clothes. "I tried each satin-silken top- was alien in the sitting-room. I could never be as lovely as those clothes." From this quote we know that the presents were very rich and delicate because of the way Moniza Alvi uses alliteration to emphasize that the material of the clothes were as soft as the words used to describe them.
The Sniper
The Sniper Russia Front 1944 September 16th Men were brutally being pushed on to the boats. The generals were beating them, because they wouldn't move. They were to scared to fight against the well armoured Germans. The raging voices of the Generals was under-heard due to the screaming of the frightened soldiers. As the boats set off the horrified soldiers looked back to see the former corpses of there fellow comrades murdered buy their own generals! The generals kept shooting in the air to try and stop the traitors from swimming away. But it didn't stop them. The desperate men jumped off the boats. As soon as this happened the generals were ordering there sergeants to kill the traitors. No one blamed them they were only going to die sooner or later from the German or Russian bullets. The roaring of the machine guns was nothing compared to the screaming of the drowning and screaming soldiers in the water. Seconds later they were forgotten, as the German spit-fire planes flew above, they released a deathful spray of bullets. The men in the boats crouched fearfully for there lives, as the bullets pierced the cloth like cover of the boat, the men could sense if they were going to die or not. The punching bullets sent the men that had been shot, screaming in fear to the ground in pain than they could ever imagine. The blood of the dieing soldiers squirted out in deep red
The Red Room Essay
The Red Room How does H.G.Wells create fear and tension in 'The Red Room'? All good stories need tension, because tension is the thing which makes a story more intense, and makes the reader want to keep on reading it. The overall outline of 'The Red Room' is a young man goes to Lorraine Castle, a very gothic setting, to stay over night in the supposedly haunted room to prove that there are no such things as ghosts, but during his visit, he starts to see things differently. H. G. Wells creates fear and tension in many different ways, including through the plot, the characters, imagery and the setting. H. G. Wells creates tension through the plot by using a continuously changing pace. When the pace is slow and slightly awkward, the tension is higher because there is more time for description, but then when the pace of the story quickens most of the tension is lost, and the fear takes over: 'I glanced over my shoulder at the Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid silence of the landing' contains a lot of tension because of the slow pace and his quick movements in the motionless setting, whereas when he is running around and panicking, trying to re-light all the candles when they were being blown out by an unknown presence, there is more fear because things are very quick, frantic and as a reader
The poems
The poems "This Room" and "Not my Business" can be seen as a contrasting pair. Compare the two poems focusing on: themes, language and structure. The poem "This Room" suggests it has a theme of liberation and freedom. The first stanza hints at this e.g. "This room is breaking out". From line 14-15 talk about celebration by banging pots and pans. Perhaps the room has been oppressed for so long that its joy of freedom can only be expressed with sounds. "Not my Business" is a definite contrast to "This Room". The writer uses this poem to express apathy and oppression in the country they are in. Another theme that could be seen in this poem is fear. Fear of the jeep, fear of "They", and fear of losing the yam from his hungry hand. Both writers use personification in their poems. The use of personification makes the object seem alive when it isn't. In "This Room" the writer personifies the room by saying it's "breaking out" (line 1). This could mean breaking free of things like oppression, death or material belongings. The effect of this is the room is more animate and it gives more meaning to the text as a whole. It also gives a vivid imagery of what is going on, allowing the reader to understand the poem. The writer uses onomatopoeia ("bang" and "clang" in lines 14 and 15). Onomatopoeia is a form of aural imagery. The purpose of using onomatopoeia is to produce the sound of
