Tuesday, December 02, 2008
African Poetry
(All sections) We have studied a few African poems in class during these last weeks (i.e., "These too are our elders" by J Mapanje, "The Casualties" by C Achebe, "When tomorrow is too long" by T Ojaide, and "How can I sing" by O Ofeimun). Re-read Jack Mapanje's poem and try to express the old man's position within the context portrayed in the poem. You must submit your text BEFORE Sunday.
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The speaker compares elders with hyenas. He/She expresses that old people are, just like hyenas, the most worthless and miserable people since they always take advantage of young black people's intelligence and fresh ideas ("inhaling all the free air out Of you") and, at the same time, make fun at their inexpirience (At work I was unseating him, he preached").
On the other hand, elders show a different mask outdoor and try to convince everybody that they trust, admire and help young black people to be successful (he pretended I was more useful than the Whiteman once in My seat, and why he sent me to school at all?"). However, elders'mask disappears when they "backslid" and reject young black people's clerverness again, but black youth is maybe even more intelligent than elders since they wonder "why these elders always exploit our disbelief?". Rosmery Arias
The Old Man certainly has a representative position which “is supposed” to be used in favor of younger people, maybe the owner of a company or maybe the president of a country. As he is an Old Man, people should show certain respect towards him. However, the Old Man is portrayed as someone pretentious “In bloated plumage” and also malevolent by acting suspiciously, evasively and corruptively “their masks carry fatal viruses” “At work I was unseating him, he preached” “His face showing amid the fluffed out ostrich Feathers” “why he pretended I was more useful than the Whiteman once in My seat” “…he merely backslid through the bamboo rafters Showering behind rotten amulets and mice shit!” against the same people he was supposed to help; in this case, these people is represented by the speaker “But I too went to the village he had visited” . The Old Man takes advantage of their respect, but, at the same time, these people are aware of this situation and they wonder about the reason why the Old Man acts the way he does “Why do these elders always exploit our disbelief?”
“These Too Are Our Elders” by Jack Mapanje is a poem that certainly shows the position of an old man who is witnessing the appearance of somebody- a higher entity- from a group who shows power and vitality-much more vitality and strength than he has-. That is why the old man may be in a weaker position from that of the ancestor or elder who is showing up at nights. This old man is an Indian man who is questioning the fact that the elders are using him to perform some actions. Evidence of this may be found in the following lines:
“..why he pretended I was more useful than the Whiteman once in my seat..”,
“..why he sent me to school..”
The way the speaker uses the verb “pretend” shows some kind of disbelieve towards the actions performed by the elders. Also, the fact that the speaker wonders why the elders show up only at nights and not during the day reflects the questioning of the speaker:
“They always come at night…”.
“…I should ask him why he always came at night”.
The speaker may be also criticizing the possibility that the elders are stopping people from the village from being free. Definitely, according to the old man’s perspective, the elders do not bring good or positive things to the people. We can find evidence of this in the following extracts:
“…tossing you on their avocado noses, inhaling all the free air out of you.” .
This section of the poem not only shows that the elders are stopping people from being free, but also the fact that they are doing it by pretending to be good when their intentions are totally the opposite: “…Their masks carry fatal viruses.”
The old man, apart from all the previously mentioned aspects, is in not quite sure about who the elders are. He does not know why they come at night dressed in hyena skins, or why they twist their sinews in a frenzied dance. He wonders many things about the elders. So, from his position, he criticizes the elders because they are mysterious – because they only show up at nights - , and they probably do not have good intentions.
This poem, as the majority of the others written by Jack Mapanje, has to do with the reality he had lived in his country, Malawi, where a strong dictatorship had been installed for more than thirty years. For him, it was usual to write poems as a way to express his discomfort and complaints about this situation, but he did it in a disguised way in order to not to have any suspects on him.
After years of writing, and always with the fear of the reaction of the regime against him, eventually, he was arrested and sent to jail, when he was imprisoned four years approximately. During this period he went through a lot of unfortunate situations. For that reason, this poem probably reflects a part of his personal reality inside prison.
In line 1, he probably refers to the prison guards as the elders that come at night, and those guards probably treated him roughly and humiliated him, as well as they had a behavior similar to those people who have preferences on their own sex, that is to say, homosexuals; doing things such as touching or smelling their private parts or for instance, to get excited in an abnormal way, just for the fact of seeing another man in front of them.
He could also have taken into consideration the consequences of that kind of behavior, by mention that they carried viruses, (probably VIH), a common illness in Africa, as we can see in line 4.
In the third and fourth stanzas he makes mention of a person who also went at night and this person, probably an important one, perhaps the same president of the country; considered him more useful than a white man, and behaving the same way, a corrupted one, showing despicable habits, rotten values and irrupting in his own territory or principles by the force, without any permission, as we can realize in line 14, ‘he merely backslid through the bamboo rafters’; maybe with the intention of making him retreat of his own ideals and stop telling the truth to others about becoming aware of the situation and trying to get themselves out of that condition.
That way, possibly he tried to express all the infamous circumstances lived by himself and the people in his country, where existed by that time, a total lack of freedom and a system corrupted by the power and the government of one person, a dictator who was accustomed to silence the voices of dissidence.
In this Poem, the speaker, who could probably be the Author Jack Manpanje, expresses his/her position against the way some people who seem to be in a higher level of authority and were old treated them in a time; he also is kind of surprise that these people being old behave like that because he probably thinks people of this age should behave nicely and be honest " Watch these elders". On one hand, the speaker says these elders are not people to trust because they try to show something nice which is really the opposite; they pretend to be good people but they actually have bad intentions and take advantage of weak people and the credit for their work "They always come at night In bloated plumage, tossing you on their avocado noses, inhaling all the free air out of you. Their masks carry fatal viruses". On the other hand, The speaker also says that these elders try to make Black people think they have the same rights, which is not true, and that they are valuable and more important than white people but what they really want is to make these black people do all the work "I too went to the village he had visited" "why he pretended I was more useful than the Whiteman once in My seat, and why he sent me to school at all?". The speaker shows that he is conscious of all of those things those elders do and despite sometimes they show their bad intentions and take out their masks " Well, he merely backslid through the bamboo rafters Showering behind rotten amulets and mice shit!” Black people is still manipulated “Why do these elders always exploit our disbelief?
If we study the biography of the author and history of Malawi were he was born we can infer that this poem was probably a protest to slavery and the way the authorities treated black people during the dictatorship this country had.
“These Too Are Our Elders" by Jack Mapanje is a poem in which the Elders might be the representation of evilness, such as misery, illness, corruption and even prostitution; which causes deadly diseases and women’s degradation. The previous analysis is observable in the verse that refers to the elders as the one’s that: “… inhaling all the free air out of you. Their masks carry fatal viruses…”
It is also possible that the speaker refers to the Elders as a constant evilness which is part of their culture since the beginning of times, and therefore, even that they know it is vicious as a sign of all the negatives aspects in life; they are used to them (elders) and they accept them as a component of their existence.
Besides, it is very interesting the fact that the elders “…always come at night…” dressed in camouflage, hiding their real intentions and retrogressing peoples’ life due to the fact that they exploit their disbeliefs.
Mariángeles Salazar.
The poem provides a comparison between the old man´s experience in life, with the fluffed out ostrich-that represents the youth when perceived as superficial and inefficient, as it irremediably replaces the elderly in terms of opportunities and believes that used to be socially accepted, but which have changed with time.
The old man shows a behavior of superiority in comparing themselves with the younger generations, as the speaker states that all elders- excluding itself and including this old man in particular- when found in company with other elders, feel they can toss people around (like the speaker-part of a younger generation) and say whatever they want about them whether true or false, which gives the speaker some feeling of frustration or desperation as the old man imposes his believes to others (I was unseating him, he preached). These feelings are represented by the figure of the hyena- a carnivorous scavenger animal that is socially overlooked at with disgust, giving the audience that this is the way the youth perceive the the elderly.
Yet, it seems that when this old man comes in contact with other people-as in the village he visited at night- he behaves hypocritically (which links with their masks in the first stanza) and pretends to agree on the efficiency of the younger crowd he is surrounded with (which includes the speaker), meaning that the old man may be trying to survive in society, as he takes advantage of those who surround him under the belief that the elderly are to be respected, but at the same time underestimates the ability of those surrounding him of realizing this. Also, the symbol night may represent the condition he feels most comfortable with, conditions he can still handle that haven´t been taken away from him yet.
From the very title we can notice that the speaker refers to a specific group of people and makes an important clarification about them when he/she states “these too are our elders”, as an attempt to make us aware of this fact, which is real whether we like it or not. So it is extremely important to take into consideration that the old people described in the poem do not represent all of the elders but a number of them.
In the first verse we can find kind of a warning “Watch these elders”, and the reasons why we should be so careful of them. First of all, “They always come at night”, that is in the darkness, as wanting to hide something, maybe dark intentions. Second of all, we find the description of the elders, they wear “bloated plumage” and are “draped in hyena skins”, “face showing amid the fluffed out ostrich Feathers”, and they also have masks which contain “fatal viruses”. The whole description gives the sensation of being in front of someone (or something) sumptuous and threatening, someone who is not only untrustworthy but insincere, so insincere that needs to wear a mask, a mask which may causes a big pain since it contains a source of diseases.
However, in certain way, this elder feels threatened by the speaker “I was unseating him, he preached”, but he pretends the speaker is useful, even more useful than his/her white predecessor. This last clue “the White man once in My seat” suggests that the speaker is not white, and taking into account who the author of the poem is, there is a strong possibility that he/she is black. The elders, whether black or white, are portrayed as dishonest, corrupted, greedy and evil “he merely backslid through the bamboo rafters showering behind rotten amulets and mice shit”. They may represent people who are in an advantageous position from which they abuse others, maybe a decadent and oppressive government. This last conclusion may be inferred when the speaker asks “why he sent me to school at all?”, as we all know education is supposed to be provide by the government, apart from that, the last verse “Why do these elders always exploit our disbeliefs” expresses a behavior which is typical of many politicians.
Most of my classmates came into conclusion that the speaker of this poem is talking about youth and old age. The contrast between the strength of youth and the wisdom of being elder. In my perception the speaker would perfectly talk about illness that are affecting his country. (e.g., Aids, malaria, etc.) The evidence of that could be found in the last two verses of the first stanza, "inhaling all the free air out of you. Their masks carry fatal viruses"
Evidence that would support the idea of the speaker talking about diseases is the beginning of the second stanza, "One came the other night draped in hyena skins
His face showing amid the fluffed out ostrich feathers, twisting his sinews in a frenzied dance" These verses could show that most of the time people ignore completely where certain viruses come from. How they multiply and propagate among the population.
The last verse of the second stanza shows what it seems to be a kind of distinction between people who are living with those illnesses and the speaker who says, "At work I was unseating him, he preached" The disease is complaining that there are some people who were not affected by the symptoms of the disease. One of those people is the speaker himself.
The last two stanzas might support one more time the hypothesis of diseases represented by "elders" when the speaker says in the third stanza "I too went to the village he had visited.
They said I should ask him next time why he always came at night, why he pretended
I was more useful than the Whiteman once in my seat" The elder who "came the other night draped in hyena skins" appears at night and the inhabitants of the village reproach him why that "elder always came at night" That would mean, why that illness hid and did not show out fo everybody to see it?
The last stanza, in its last verse shows something very important; the reason why the "elder came at night without nobody noticed him"
That reason is "Disbelief" People tend to think that bad things would not affect themselves, but others, until one time they realize that everything could happen if you do not take care of yourselves.
It is a pity that -as usual- only 2 people (almost 3) managed to be responsible enough to post their comments before the deadline. In any case, we should consider ourselves most fortunate because the were some ten comments posted before the end of the week-end.
Besides that, it is quite a notieceable fact that most of you come to a series of conclusion you hardly supported on a logical basis and on the information we can obtain in the poem.
Let's hope for us to make the best possible use of time before the test on Friday 12th. Best of lucks to you all, despite it not being a matter of luck any time now!
The speaker seems (who is apparently a Doctor who has studied formal medicine at any university) to deceive his elders culture because of the disrespectful way he expresses himself of his own culture and traditions. We can find support for this idea when the speaker refers to the costumes the elders used in the following way: “…bloated plumages tossing in their avocado noses” this expression seems to bring a taste of mocking of his elders. He also blames the elders of bringing illnesses “their masks carry fatal viruses”
On the other hand, the Elders seem to show some resignation and acceptance facing the changes that are to come, this idea can be seen on the excerpt “I was unseating him, he preached” this is the doctor was taking his job away, and he just did what he has been used to doing for ages. Other evidences to support this thesis are the extract “Why he pretended I was more useful than the Whiteman once in” and “Why he sent me to school at all?” In the previous passages of the poem the doctor seem to recognize the elders were giving him some air to act in, to perform his scientific medicine but he became frustrated because the elders kept doing their witchcraft.
Eucari Castillo
This poem reflects how elders face young people progress. The speaker shows how the old man sent the young doctor to school, but he does not accept the new tendencies and he continues using the old ones as a quack doctor (“…,and why he sent me to school at all? Well, he merely backslid through the bamboo rafters Showering behind rotten amulets and mice shit!”).
It seems like a competition, the old man knows that the young one can bit him, but it is difficult to assume that reality, as an old man, knowing that the young one is more useful, and he can substitute him ("At work I was unseating him,” and “...,why he pretended I was more useful than the Whiteman once in"). The old man’s arrogance is so high to accept a change that he has to keep the old tendencies, without thinking that those can bring or spreads fatal viruses (“Their masks carry fatal viruses).
Perhaps, the old man comes at night as a quack doctor hiding himself behind hyena skins and ostrich feathers supposing that all those ritual thing can cure people. However, he knows that is not enough and that is why he comes at night in order not to be seeing by the young doctor (“They always come at night In bloated plumage, tossing you on their Avocado noses,…”, “One came the other night draped in hyena skins His face showing amid that fluffed out ostrich Feathers, twisting his sinews in a frenzied Dance.”, “why he always came at night,”).
In the last line of the poem, the speaker is showing a reality, which is: no matter young people are going to substitute the oldest ones, they (the elders) won’t accept that. ("Why do these elders always exploit our disbelief?"). Although, elders know the benefits that all those changes can bring themselves, they won't give up in front of the youngest, for this reason they exploit their disbelief.
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