In What Were They Like and Nothings Changed, both Levertov and Afrika illustrate a sense of meaning about Viet Nam and District Six by using linguistic and structural techniques.

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Compare the ways poets use structure and language to convey meaning in ‘What Were they Like?’ and one other poemIn ‘What Were They Like’ and ‘Nothing’s Changed’, both Levertov and Afrika illustrate a sense of meaning about ‘Viet Nam’ and ‘District Six’ by using linguistic and structural techniques. Levertov explores the loss of the Vietnamese cultures while Afrika represents the racial divide that continues to exist even post-Apartheid. Firstly, both writers use strong language choices to demonstrate their anger towards the loss of culture and racial divide that is apparent in both areas. In ‘Nothing’s Changed’ the poet uses words such as ‘hot, white [anger}’ to illustrate how frustrated he is. The anger and rage that has developed inside the protagonist has affected him both physically and emotionally. Indeed, he wants to break the barrier
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between the two races as he yearns for ‘a stone, a bomb, to shiver down the glass’. Similarly, in ‘What Were They Like’, Levertov also expresses her resentment but in a more subtle way. She uses phrases such as ‘their light hearts turned to stone’. This suggests that the Vietnamese people, who were light-hearted and simple people, have become inflicted with pain and distress. The contrast of ‘light’ against ‘stone’ which is heavy effectively shows this. The poets also use references to words that accommodate the semantic field of nature to indicate the sharp contrast between the cultures. In ‘What ...

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