How do the poets create a sense of place in 'Limbo' and 'Nothing's changed'?

How do the poets create a sense of place in ‘Limbo’ and ‘Nothing’s changed’

Limbo

I feel as though Brathwaite is trying to create an atmosphere or ‘sense of place’ by merging rhythm with short-syllable words, along with repetitive stanzas, creating hypnotic chants that give a sense of movement and events.

The first stanza starts off ‘And limbo stick is the silence in front of me, limbo’. Again this gives off a sense of movement, and the fact that Brathwaite uses short syllable words, means that it is going at a certain pace. Usually, if someone were to describe his or her thoughts and feelings that he or she experienced at a carnival or festival, to truly make the person understand and ‘feel’ what the experience could have been like, the best way to put it across would be to show ‘movement’. If what Brathwaite was trying to describe was at a slow, laborious tempo, a stanza like that of four, ‘stick hit sound, and the dark still steady’ would be, for instance, written as ‘ there was the sound of the stick hitting…’ and vice versa. If it was at a quick pace, where the order of events were shorter, the simplest way to portray this would be to write short syllables (or most commonly ‘monosyllabic’ words) and rhythmically patterned stanzas.

It is made clear in stanza four and seven that he is onboard a ship, ‘…and the ship like it ready’ or ‘ long dark deck and the water surrounding me…’ and so forth. The opening three words in the first line of stanza nine, long dark deck, suggest that ‘limbo’ is taking place at night and aboard the deck, with the ‘water surrounding…’ showing us the environment of which it was taking place.

In stanza nine you get the impression that the ‘ship’ is in actual fact a slave ship, shipping the slaves across to another country, during the night. It says ‘stick is the whip’ and now the long dark deck is being called ‘slavery’. The first line of stanza nine also describes the limbo stick as being ‘the whip’, turning it into a ‘weapon of fear’, and giving the desired effect of the ‘masters control’. By repeating this in stanza ten, the poet therefore mounts tension and almost fuels the reader with rage and anger against the cruel oppressors because of the way it portrays an ongoing persecution and brutality towards the slaves. Still, amidst all the harsh torment, it seems, as depicted in stanza eleven, that they continue to ‘party on’ with limbo, which, in a way, shows the innocence and naivety of the slaves onboard the ship. There is made, a similar connection between the Bible’s doctrine of ‘rejoicing in the midst of your sorrows’, in other words, to not let bad times or circumstances to ‘steal’ your joy, which is seen in the Bible as Jesus, the true essence of ‘peace’ and ‘happiness’.

It says in stanza twelve, ‘drum stick knock…’ thus creating, with the use of monosyllabic words, the ‘beat’ or ‘flow’, showing to us the party-like atmosphere of the limbo. You also get the feeling that you are there, doing the ‘limbo’ dance. It says ‘…and the darkness is over me’ (you are now facing the dark sky), meaning that you are attempting the limbo (which is to arch your back in a backwards motion in order to pass under the stick), then it says ‘knees spread wide’ (which is the best way to keep balance whilst doing this) and ...

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‘Knees spread wide

And the dark ground is under me

Down

Down’

Which gives the reader the feeling of ‘movement’ and ‘rhythm’, making it seem as though you are now to the point where you are practically on your knees, spreading them ‘wide’ as you travel ‘down, down, down’ underneath the limbo stick. Even up to stanza eighteen you are given the feeling the limbo goes on, sorrow is still overshadowed with joy and happiness, then gradually from nineteen to twenty-two, every thing starts to come to an end. It says from line forty-fifty one,

‘Sun coming up

And the drummers are praising me’

The Limbo has now carried on till sunrise and he is receiving praise for lasting this long.

‘Out of the dark

And the dumb gods are raising me’

I believe this to be symbolic of two things. The first being the sun rising, out of the darkness which was limbo, and the second was also signifying the end for his moment of ecstasy; now was the time to bring it all to an end.

‘Up

And the music is saving me’

This means that as he progressed upwards, his strength was from the music, the last thing that could give hope and help them not to think about the grim reality, which was slavery. The music was their ‘savior’, their ‘light in the darkness’. Then there was the

‘Hot

Slow

Step

On the burning ground’

The high tempo pace and lively spirit of the limbo had now come to a ‘Hot slow step’, with the heat signifying the intensity of their labor and the ‘slow step’ showing us the reluctance of the slaves. Though in Africa (which is where the slaves taken from) there would have been a tremendous amount of heat (which they of course were used to), there was the impression that the slaves had now reached foreign ground, as the heat of the ground was described as being ‘burning’, in other words, a heat they were not used to.

Nothing’s changed

In this poem, Afrika approaches it with powerful, short syllable or sometimes-monosyllabic words and also with the use of repetition to show his feelings and outlook on District Six and the environment around him, similar to Brathwaite in ‘Limbo’. This method remains one of the most effective as it portrays the feelings and thoughts of the poem persona as though you were there, and Afrika’s use of sharp, attacking words underlies the strong emotional passion he feels about the different places.

In the first stanza you are given the impression that the site Afrika takes you through is a derelict ‘once prosperous’ town, now a deserted mess. It talks about the ‘hard stones’ clicking beneath the heels, ‘ seeding grasses thrust’ into the trouser cuffs, cans are ‘trodden on’ and tall ‘weeds’ spring forth from the ground. Immediately the impression is that you in the middle of a rough, lonely town, and Afrika is guiding you through it, creating the perfect ‘sense of place’.

Through the whole of stanza two is the controversial District Six, which in Capetown 1966, was apartheid, which meant segregation of the black and white people. ‘…No board says it is: but my feet know… and the skin about my bones, and the soft labouring of my lungs, and the hot, white, inwards turning anger of my eyes’. The repetition of the word and creates the tension that as he’s walking through this town, he can feel the severe anger and vexation building up inside. The word ‘and’ is used almost like a plus sign, with each line of contempt building upon the other.

Stanza three basically describes what he can see and how he sees it. ‘Brash with glass’ shows us the arrogance and pomposity being displayed through so-called splendour or finesse. ‘Name flaring like a flag’ you can depict the proud bold words sticking out high like a flag for all to see. The ‘new, up-market, haute cuisine, guard at the gatepost’ assumes that it is a highly prestigious and immaculate area which was carefully guarded to prevent blacks from entering.

‘Whites only inn.’ It says on the last line of stanza three, then says in stanza four, ‘no sign says it is: but we know where we belong’. This is fundamentally implying the poet’s disparagement or satire, by saying that ‘no sign’ states it is for ‘whites only’, but rather that the indigenous population are led to believe this, and are more or less ‘brainwashed’ into thinking such a place was above their place in society, suggesting that they should already ‘know’ their place as the so-called ‘inferior race’. In the next two stanzas, Afrika mocks the proper gander of the proclaimed ‘lavish lifestyle’ of the white man to the undermining ‘working-class lifestyle’ of the black man. It says that as he presses his nose to the clear panes, he knows or assumes that before he sees them ‘there will be crushed ice white glass, linen (an expensive fabric) falls, the single rose (a sign of ‘elegance’). By this description, the poet wants you to imagine this posh place as being the dwelling grounds of the whites. Then it moves down the road to the ‘black’ lifestyle, the ‘working man’s café’ where you buy ‘bunny chows’. This place comes across as more common as it says ‘Take it with you’ rather than sitting down to eat and enjoy the comfort and hospitality of the place. ‘Eat it at a plastic table’s top’ instead of at a more prestigious oak table, laid with fresh table cloth, ‘wipe your fingers on your jeans’ in the place of the more hygienic napkin, ‘spit a little on the floor’ portraying a lower class image of a filthy and primitive lifestyle. ‘It’s in the bone’ indicates, once again, a sour note of sarcasm and irony towards the fact that ‘this is the way the blacks are (meant to be) born – it’s in the bone’. By the comparison of the two places, of the ‘dwelling place of the whites’ and the ‘dwelling place of the blacks’, Afrika epitomizes the subtle and simplistic, stereotypical views of the Afrikaans (a name for the whites, who were originally the English people that claimed the land during the 1800’s) who were therefore branding the blacks as being the ‘common folk’.

In this poem Afrika uses a ‘sense of place’ in order to create and portray thoughts and feelings, and to put across his primary message, which is that the separation of black and white people, in a way, remains, and the racist, patronizing views towards the black people suggest that ultimately:

Nothing’s changed.

Having read both ‘Nothing’s changed’ and ‘Limbo’, I have now come to the conclusion that both the poets (Tatamkhula Afrika and Edward Kamau Brathwaite), approach their poems in similar ways in the sense that both use a lot of repetition and short-syllable words to mount tension and to create the feeling of ‘being in the moment’.