Comparing Half Caste and Search for my Tongue

Comparing Half Caste and Search for my Tongue

Culture. It’s a very complicated term, with many different

interpretations, but what does it actually mean? In this essay I will

compare two poems from completely different cultures to see if we get

any comparisons, the poems I have chosen to write about are Half-Caste

by John Agard and Search for my Tongue by Sujata Bhatt, I have chosen

these because I feel they raise some very significant points. But back

to the question mentioned earlier, what is culture? Everyone has a

different view on culture, but to me it is a huge influence on our

everyday lives, many different issues contribute to the term ‘Culture’

from the way we dress, to our beliefs, attributes, how we live, and

even what we eat. It affects us all differently depending on how we

understand it, for example, if we were to believe that culture was

just a religious matter we would only be affected by what that

religion tells us, whereas if we were to believe that culture was a

whole way of life we would be affected in a completely different way.

Culture is important to us all, regardless of how we feel about it, it

gives us a guide to our lives and shows us some boundaries; it can

also give us advice and help us to be a better person. The word

‘different’ can be used in two contexts; we can say it both

complimentarily and offensively, my understanding of this is that some

people are afraid of what’s different and therefore have to make

comments to feel safe. But when we say ‘different’ cultures we are

referring to the way other people live, and if we are afraid of this

we must all seriously reconsider ourselves.

As I have already mentioned one of the poems I will be studying is

Half-Caste by John ...

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... the end of the poem though she

seems to have won the fight.

In conclusion, everyone looks upon culture differently; there are

those who take it seriously and those that don’t. But whether or not

we like it we are all part of a culture and should therefore respect

other’s. Of course culture can be seen as something to fight with,

there are so many people in the world with different views it would be

surprising if it wasn’t! In my opinion both authors use language as

something to fight with and against in their own unique ways. Both of

these poems use some sort of violence to get a message across, this to

me is a type of fighting, so the answer to my question is ‘YES’ we

could see culture as something to fight with or against because of the

language both poems use, for instance the taunting that John Agard

uses and the metaphors that Sujata Bhatt uses.