Comparing and Contrasting the Poems, Carpenter’s Complaint and Coolie Mother

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The poem ‘Carpenter’s Complaint’ by Edward Baugh was about a carpenter who wanted to build a coffin for his friend; however, the son of the dead man ‘maaga-foot bwoy’ wanted another man, Mr. Belnavis, to build his father a fancier and nicer coffin. He was very mad because he built his friend’s house, but not his coffin. The carpenter described Mr. Belnavis as a ‘big-belly crook who don’t know him arse from a chisel’, and who only got the job to make the coffin because he was a big-shot. We knew that he was in a bar because of line 11 ‘Fix we a nex’ one, Miss Fergie’. He praised his friend’s ability to drink, and be able to stand up straight and walk home ‘cool, cool, cool’. The carpenter would have built the coffin for free because the man was his friend. He believed that university turned the ‘maaga-foot bwoy’ fool, and it burnt him badly. The poem ‘Coolie Mother’ by David Dabydeen was about a hard working coolie mother named Jasmattie. She was broke and her home was so small that it was compared to a shoe box. Jasmattie did any work that she could find and these included beating clothes, weeding yard, chopping wood, and feeding fowl. She worked for every body line4 ‘For this body and that body and every blasted body’ suggested that she was frustrated and that she worked for everyone; even those that she might not have liked. She had to fetch water from the Canje River because they didn’t have running water. She worked until her ‘foot bottom crack’ and ‘she hand cut-up’, and curses swarmed out of her mouth. She was sick because she was coughing blood, but going to a doctor that would cut into her savings, so instead she mashed the blood into the ground. She saved her ‘one-one slow penny’ because in the end they added up. In t... ... middle of paper ... ...It made us see that Jasmattie’s lifestyle had shaped who she was, and it had made her a determined woman who knew what she wanted, and how to get it. Jasmattie’s life wasn’t glamorous at all, but very tough. In ‘Carpenter’s Complaint’ by Edward Baugh we were able to understand the carpenter’s lifestyle when he praised his dead friend using a simile line 15 ‘Then stand up straight as a plumb-line’. This showed us that the carpenter enjoyed drinking because he adored his friend’s ability to drink a whole lot, and still be able to walk home normal. A hyperbole was used in lines 14-15 ‘When him drink old Brown and Coxs’n into the ground’. Here he was also praising his friend’s drinking abilities, however, one can’t literally drink into the ground so that was an exaggeration. The literary elements which Baugh used in this poem showed us that the carpenter liked to drink.

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