ENG1501 Exam Pack (Memo, Notes)

ENG1501 Exam Pack (Memo, Notes) Lexical polysemy: The coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase. “langa”: • Black township on the outskirts of suburban Cape Town established in 1927. • It was the place where police brutality ended in a blood bath (21 March 1960). • It was also a place associated with great resistance to Apartheid. • Langa literally means “sun” in Xhosa. • The word Langa is a tribute to a man called Langalibalele - a chief and renowned rainmaker - who in 1873 was imprisoned on Robben Island for rebelling against the Natal government. “district six”: • Name of a former racially mixed inner-city residential area in Cape Town where over 60 000 of its inhabitants were forced to move during the 1960's by the apartheid regime. What is the poem about? /What is the subject of the poem? / Theme + message of the poem: The short, yet powerful poem, implies a plea (a serious or urgent request) for violent revolution/turn against Apartheid laws. Who is speaking? 3rd person narrative. What is the location/setting of the poem? Both stanza 1 and 2 open with the image of the sea with its “murky waters” and the “howling wind”. Attitudes and feelings in the poem: /Emotions and feelings of the speaker: In the first stanza the speaker is melancholic, pleading and sympathetic. In the second stanza the speaker is determined and strong-willed/minded. Tone of the poem: Pleading, melancholic and sympathetic (stanza 1), determined and strong-willed/minded (stanza 2). Form and structure of the poem (rhyme, rhythm, line length, stanza length, etc.): • Free verse (lines with no prescribed pattern or structure). • The poem consists of two stanzas, 8 lines each (octave). Stanza 1: The atmosphere in prison is horrible, dark and lonely. Stanza 2: The prisoners are rising as “heroes” because they are fighting for their freedom and the end of Apartheid. They are longing for change. • Lacks punctuation and capitalisation that suggests a feeling of freedom from being oppressed by his country and government. Type of poem: Lyrical poem – expresses the poets emotions. Poetic devices (e.g. metaphors, similes, enjambment, alliteration, personification, etc.): Explained in poem. S - The study-notes marketplace 6 | P a g e 1. The explanatory note below the poem gives you a clue as to the title’s significance. Imagine that you are standing below Signal Hill. Write a paragraph in which you explain what you see. When looking up you will see the “white authority” or “white government” of the apartheid area looking down upon the different races living in district 6. You will look out onto a “murky” (dark and gloomy) sea. “Gather shells” might be a reference to the slaves that crossed the sea to imprisonment on the other side of the globe. The seashells represent the children covering their ears from the cries and weeping of the slaves. Since the children listen to the cries of the slaves in the dungeon of death while holding shells to their ears, it is possible that the shells can be a metaphor for the dungeon of death, which, in turn, is a metaphor for the situation the slaves or coloured and black people are in. This symbolises the helplessness of black people. Sons of langa – almost biblical in emphasis – and it implies that these people have a common ancestry. Who is the township named after and it is named after someone. This person fought the government and was imprisoned on Robben island. To reclaim places like the ruins of district 6 – to make these ruins the cause of rebellion – the foundations of a wave of rebellion.” fiery dawn” also suggest that an “angry break of day”, meaning that the coloured people wake up angry in the mornings. They are angry and frustrated with their circumstances. – it destroys and it cleanses. It implies movement, but it is the one word of colour in the poem – the red of Marxism perhaps. It also means to burn brightly and strongly – a maintaining of the moral force that will overcome. 2. Explain the denotation and connotations of the word ‘Shadow’ in the title of this poem. Denotation- “a dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface” District 6 is the direct shadow of Signal Hill. Connotation- The part “in the shadow” of Signal Hill represents the black people who suffered under the Apartheid regime. They were the people who had to live in the shadows of the white government. The government overshadowed their whole lives and basically made their choices for them. The word “shadow” also bears a connotation of fear in general. When one looks at children’s books, one will notice that the antagonist in the stories would be a “shadowy figure”. Therefore the “Shadow of Signal Hill” suggests the white government is the antagonist in terms of them being wrong in what they are doing – which is initiating Apartheid in South Africa. 3. Look up the word ‘lamentations’ (line 7) in a dictionary. When the speaker instructs the reader to listen to ‘the lamentations of slaves’ (line 7), does he or she expect the reader to hear real slaves in the present time of the poem? Why or why not? Write a paragraph in which you describe what it is that the ‘children of colour’ (line 4) hear. “lamentations” connects with “howling wind” which emphasises the suffering of the black and coloured people. Yes, the speaker wants us to hear and know the pain that they’re suffering at the exact moment. Since the children listen to the cries of the slaves in the dungeon of death while holding shells to `their ears, it is possible that the shells can be a metaphor for the dungeon of death, which, in turn, is a metaphor for the situation the slaves or coloured and black people are in. This symbolises the helplessness of black people. When I read the poem, I almost feel sorry for the slaves and children. Maybe this is also what the poet wants - to create an emotional atmosphere so the reader can empathise with the black people. 4. The first three lines of each stanza are the same. What does this tell you about the setting of the poem? Why is this important? A cold, unpleasant atmosphere is created. Metaphor: howling wind might refer to the cries of the black people, them pleads for freedom and equality. Furthermore, I think the tone is a sad, depressed tone when I read words like "murky" "shadow" "howling wind" "dungeon of death" "lamentation". This is to represent them pleads for freedom. May also represent the never ending plead of the people who are suffering from the apartheid area. 5. What image is created in line 14? Write a paragraph in which you describe what this line means. The spears of the night are a metaphor for the black people fighting back. "night" and "spears" usually have negative, dark connotations, but in this instance, it is the opposite: the black people represent freedom and light because they want to fight for what is fair and right. Although one reads it as "night", it can represent the homophone "knight". this will make absolute sense in the context of the poem and the explanation just given. (it is like "Bustle in the House" where "morning" can be heard as "mourning".) "Knight" also has a positive connotation. In medieval times the knight represented the good. A princess was saved by a knight in shining armour. Therefore, the sentence "sharpen the spears of the night" can be reread as "sharpen the spears of the knight", meaning that the people will fight for justice and that which is right. S - The study-notes marketplace S - The study-notes marketplace 7 | P a g e In Exile (Arthur Nortje) Open skies flare wide enough to make me vaguely anxious. Nimbus wisps trace patterns of the past. Wind sweeps between the towers 5 through runnels, old and new. My heart is hollowed with the boots passing through. Garments gather and play about my limbs: they tremble to a return 10 gust. Leaves and transient streetscape conjure up that southern blue sky and wind-beautiful day, creating paradise. Otherwise: 15 the soul decays in exile. But wrong pigment has no scope, so clot the blue channel of memory. On a sand slope I build a picture of the sea. 20 The grains that slide away are wind-breathed, are stirred by finger. Benign, a cloud obscures the sun, this hunger. S - The study-notes marketplace S - The study-notes marketplace 8 | P a g e In Exile What is the poem about?/ What is the subject of the poem? Time is the 1960's, during Apartheid. The title accurately reflects that the poem is about being “in exile”. The speaker has fled his birth land (on his own accord on an Oxford University Scholarship in the UK) & now lives abroad, in a foreign land. He feels as if he is in exile. He is also in two minds. Theme + message of the poem: The poem resolves around the speaker's desire to go back home, and we learn his feelings through his attempts to remember his homeland. Memory is central to the poem. Who is speaking? A man that fled his home land (South Africa) to go live in the UK. What is the location/setting of the poem? Time is the 1960's, during Apartheid. Images of nature throughout the poem (these are the things he remembers of his homeland). Words such as “skies”, “nimbus”, “wind”, “leaves”, “blue-sky”, “wind-beautiful”, “sand”. “sea”, “cloud” and “sun”. Attitudes and feelings in the poem: /Emotions and feelings of the speaker: The speaker is longing to go back home and tries to remember his homeland. Tone of the poem: Nostalgic and longing in stanzas 1-4; tone of recognition in stanzas 5-6. Form and structure of the poem (rhyme, rhythm, line length, stanza length, etc.): No rhyme scheme - free verse (lines with no prescribed pattern or structure).. Made up of six stanzas of 4 lines each. The lack of rhyme scheme and enjambments let the speaker's thoughts , in this case his memories, flow freely. The short stanzas emphasise the fact that his memories are not worth thinking of and that he should no longer long for his homecoming, because it is not a reality any more. Type of poem: Free verse (lines with no prescribed pattern or structure). Poetic devices (e.g. metaphors, similes, enjambment, alliteration, personification, etc.): Explained in the poem. S - The study-notes marketplace S - The study-notes marketplace 9 | P a g e 1. What does the word ‘exile’ suggest? The literal meaning of this word ‘exile’ would mean to be separated from one’s home and or country, for a reason, often political. The title of this poem uses the proposition ‘’In” before the word exile which would mean that it is referring to a situation where somebody or something is part of this exile. 2. What sort of feelings would you expect someone in exile to experience? A person living in exile would be removed from all that is familiar to them and separated from familiar people, places and most likely their country. If one considers this in context to the poem “In Exile” which was written by Arthur Nortje we can assume that he was referring to his own experiences. In line 7 he uses the pronoun ‘My’ and in line 20 ‘I’ so he is most certainly speaking of personal experiences. The footnote to this poem from Seasons come to pass informs us that Nortje did in fact leave South Africa to study overseas and his poetry reflects a sense of personal and cultural dislocation. It appears that his exile was self-imposed and that he would have been able to return to South Africa if he had chosen to do so. He did not know his father and he was a ‘coloured’ person which could also have been a reason for him not only being in exile from his home but in feeling exiled from his roots. Line 7 and 8 ‘My heart is hollowed with the boots passing through’ as well as line 16 ‘the soul decays in exile’ give one some idea of what it must feel like to be in exile. The speaker could be referring to the constant change and meeting and leaving of people in his life and how there is no growth for a person separated from all that he was. 3. Provide the literal and figurative meaning of the phrase ‘a cloud obscures the sun’. This poem has used diction to create imagery, evident in this phrase ‘a cloud obscures the sun’ which literal meaning would be to see the sun covered by a passing cloud creating a dark day. Figuratively, one could consider that the meaning is that the sun is the warmth, the hope and the light and when it is obscured by fuzziness (the unknown) what hope is there of reaching the desired. Considering how these lines are used in the poem it could suggest that the speaker is admitting there is no chance of him coming home, of feeding this hunger, these dreams he has of coming out of exile. 4. Explain what the speaker could mean by lines 19 and 20. LINES 19 AND 20, ‘On a sand slope I build a picture of the sea.’ suggests that the speaker is standing on the beach looking out to sea and building pictures in his head. The lines that precede these (17 and 18) tell the reader that being the ‘wrong pigment’ which means the wrong colour, has no hope. The speaker is saying that he will not be recognized in his homeland due to the political situation and there is no chance that he will be able to return. The dreams he is creating are falling away ‘on a sand slope’. A sandy slope would be unstable and as the grains of sand slip away beneath his feet he has to ‘clot the blue channel of memory’, (line18) and face reality – there is no chance of returning to the places he remembers and dreams about. 5. Why would you say the speaker is ambivalent (in two minds) towards home and being in exile? One could say the speaker is ambivalent in his thinking as the first four stanzas present a clear picture of all his memories of home which are interspersed with images of nature – this memory of paradise. It is interesting to note that the speaker has made mention of the wind throughout these four stanzas, binding together these memories in this motion and then in the final stanza ‘the grains that slide away’ being his memories and dreams, are ‘wind-breathed’ (lines 21, 22) blown away. It is in the fifth stanza when reference is made to his colour and how it would affect his dreams where the tone of the poem changes and the speaker realizes he will not be going home, ending with the ‘the hunger’ which has gone, it is now ‘Benign’. (Lines23,24) The speaker knows there is no hope of fulfilling all the dreams he has created, possibly because he knows these dreams are purely in the mind and if he had to return home they would never be able to come to fruition under the circumstances that caused his exile. S - The study-notes marketplace S - The study-notes marketplace 10 | P a g e Still I rise (Maya Angelou) You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? 5 Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainly of tides, 10 Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, 15 Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own back yard. 20 You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. S - The study-notes marketplace S - The study-notes marketplace 11 | P a g e Does my sexiness upset you? 25 Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise 30 Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear 35 I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. 40 I rise I rise I rise.