Una Marson Analysis

Analyzing Una Marson’s poetry is seemingly hard, unless you know her relation to topics. Marson was born in Jamaica, and then later travelled to England to work for BBC. She travelled to and from England and Jamaica throughout her life, and finally passed in Jamaica. Marson’s poetry is often about living in Jamaica or about living in London, but she writes in many different perspectives. An example of this would be In Jamaica, this poem seems as though it is written in the perspective of living outside of Jamaica. But, In Jamaica is written as though it can be a description in a catalogue for a tourist wanting to visit this country to show all of its perks. For example the first line, “ O! the sun shines warm in Jamaica” (1) and continues “the

This voice can be read as very sarcastic at times because of the ‘catalogue description’ of Jamaica. This voice is pointing out the aspects of Jamaica to ultimately choose to leave or not, which is connecting to Marson’s life as well. Although this is not a memoir or even suppose to be a factual life event, it can be viewed as Marson’s voice and character choosing to leave Jamaica and move to London. Through the whole poem, the character points out positives and negatives of Jamaica but in the last stanza finally show the characters decisions to leave Jamaica for another country. But before the final stanza, Marson describes a country for what seems to only be tourism, which in the characters view seems to be negative and can only make the debate easy to attain. Marson writes, “should I leave these fair shores for another, be that land yet the fairest of all, I should pine for the hills of Jamaica and hasten to answer her call.” (37-40) The change of tone is also very apparent, no longer sarcastic but very serious, as the character is choosing the final resolution. This stanza leaves the reader wondering what the character chooses, but with all the sarcastic views on the tourist part of Jamaica it can be easily determined that leaving Jamaica is in the best option. And in Marson’s life, it is apparent that she did leave and move to London as well. So, it can be connected that this character did the same as Marson and in

This piece of Caribbean literature illustrates the concept and struggle to leave a life behind for a better place. The poem is written with every stanza starting with “O!,” and then a compliment about Jamaica, as though it is a great place to live but then continues the stanza with bad conditions of living, except the last stanza to conclude the characters conflict ends with the decision to leave or not. Marson uses as lot of imagery in this poem to give the reader the same attachment to the country as much as her. The imagery helps the reader also understand the view living there and the view of someone going to vacation in Jamaica. The vivid description of the beauty in Jamaica is seen in every stanza and the amenities it has, but mostly in the fourth stanza, “there’s golf, there’s dancing, and swimming. And charms that they ne’er saw before”(27-28) makes it seem as though someone is reading the catalogue and its perks of Jamaica out loud. The stanza continues with, “they call it a garden of Eden”(29) Marson makes a biblical reference which is know to be a beautiful place of trees and water. This reference illuminates the description of Jamaica because the garden of Eden known to be a magical, beautiful place that is perfect and to connect these two places and say they a similar means that Marson believes this place to be everything of the