Halfcast and Unrelated incidents

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‘Compare and contrast how other cultures are shown in Half-Caste and Unrelated Incidents’.

The poems I am comparing are “Half-Caste”, written by John Agard possibly during the twentieth century, due to that being the era Agard moved to England, encountering racism and misunderstanding of other cultures. The other poem is “Unrelated Incidents” written by Tom Leonard in 1969, the date is also shown in his poem by mentioning “BBC” which was created 50 years earlier.

Both poems share many similarities such as; they make important points about shared identities as well as individual identity, cultures and the use of phonetics. These poems can also be linked as protest poems, poems that raise and to a degree complain about issues related to their cultural origins. “Explain yuself”, a repeated phrase throughout “Half-Caste”, portrays that Agard is complaining about our closed minds, and our ignorance to judge people on their appearance. However, the phrase may also mean that we do not express ourselves vividly.

Moreover, “yoo scruff”, also repeated throughout the stanza of “Unrelated Incidents”, portrays that Leonard voices his complaints in insults, a different approach from Agard, in turn making this poem least effective from Agard’s, because not many take notice in something to which they are being offended.

“Half-Caste”, in my perspective, is about how differently people are treated for being a mixture, Agard describes how wrong it is, using metaphors in his rhetorical questions emphasizing that many things in this world are created using a mixture of things, but they are treated equally yet we treat each other according to our skin colour.

However, in a different perspective, “Half-Caste” could further be about contradicting its readers into awareness that everything is Half-Caste, “Picasso”, a famous artist, was used with contrasting colours,  “mix red an green” to show that even the famous are not a whole of something. Agard wanted its readers to clearly understand this point as he gives another example of it, ‘Tchaikovsky’, famous for his composing, shows that his work is great because he uses a mixture, “mix a black key wid a white key”.

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John Agard’s mother was Portuguese, and his father was black. Agard had his education in Guiana. When Agard moved to England, he became a touring lecturer for the common wealth institute, travelling to schools throughout the UK to promote a better understanding of Caribbean culture. Such experience could have shown Agard that thought and sight can corrupt language, revealing that language and sight can also corrupt thought, which could have affected Agard’s choice of rhetorical questions, grammar and the stanza structure.

This poem may have also been used in other parts of the world due to the reflection ...

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