Discuss the feeling of displacement in Islandman.
DISCUSS THE FEELING OF DISPLACEMENT IN ISLANDMAN.COMPARE AND CONTRAST
WITH ONE OTHER POEM OF YOUR CHOICE.
Island Man is by Grace Nichols. It is about a man who originates from
the Caribbean but still dreams of his homeland, and wakes up to the
sound of the sea on the sand and the caw of wild birds. He now lives
in London and faces the reality of the North Circular and the monotony
of Britain.
The poem of my choice is Search for my Tongue, which was written by
Sujata Bhatt. It is about what it is like to have to be able to speak
a different language to her own, and what it would be like to lose it.
By the end of the poem she is convinced it will be part of her
wherever she goes. I chose it because it is very like Island Man in
that in both situations the poet thinks something has been lost for
good, but it comes back all the time during their sleep. There are
also contrasts in both poems, which illustrate the poet's point more
so.
The opening five lines of both poems make interesting reading. Island
Man starts off with a very majestic and idyllic scene, with the waves
lapping against the shore. It is in these first few lines that our
island man shows a feeling of displacement, just in the environment he
is in. The first stanza goes as follows:-
'wakes up to the sound of blue surf in his head the steady breaking
and wombing.'
The man in question in the poem is even called island man, implying
that locally at least he is known as the island man. This is a lot
different to his Caribbean homeland, where he would be known as 'the
carpenter' or 'the fisherman'. The communities are closer knit that in
England, where everyone has their own particular...
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... of wheels
to dull North Circular roar'
This shows that he has his thoughts disturbed every morning by the
cars on the North Circular. It is this that awakes him and stops him
from reliving his island life.
This is in contrast to Search for my Tongue where the poet's feelings
continue uninterrupted throughout the whole poem. She is allowed to
tell her story without being broken up by passing traffic or people.
Both work in their own ways to great effect. The break in Island Man
is good because it help to change from one beautiful scene to an
unexciting one.
Finally in Island Man the writer reveals that the sound mentioned in
the first stanza was not wave but his pillow. It has no particular
ending. Search for my Tongue is an absolute difference in that it has
a clearly defined ending. The poet closes on the note that the tongue
has reappeared.
In the last stanza it is explained how, even when she was a child, she
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Once again, the next year, I was on the All-Star team. This time we were all determined to stay in the tournament and win the championship. We started off lousy, though, making four errors in the first game and losing 4-0. We now had to win every game and beat the last team twice. We did defeat every team we went up against, including the team that beat us the first game, and once again ended up in the championship game.
Tan’s essay does more than just illuminate the trouble with language variations; her essay features a story of perseverance, a story of making a “problem” harmonize into a “normal” life. Almost like a how-to, Tan’s essay describes an obstacle and what it takes to go above and beyond. Mirroring Tan, I have been able to assimilate “the [world] that helped shape the way I saw things” and the world that I had to conform to (Tan 129). Life is a struggle, but what makes it worth it is the climb, not what is on the other side.
In the last lines of the poem the woman attempts to reassure the child that she loved it with all her heart.
songs he had a fire and a fragment of pure joy in his voice, but when he sand
If you are not fluent in a language, you probably don 't give much thought to your ability to make your personality attractive, to be in touch with the people and be understood in your world, that doesn’t mean you are an underestimated person. Every person has something special to make them more unique, remarkable, and gorgeous between people. The opinions could lead towards success, or those opinions could be one that is losing, and have a negative impact on how people connect with you. In Amy Tan 's “Mother Tongue” she made this book for several reasons. She had started her life by learning language, and she always loved to spend her time to learn language, but this story focuses about Amy Tan 's mother with her terrible English,
Ohio Lightning, a travel softball organization, decided one year to make a third team for one age group. My team, Ohio Lightning 12U White was born. We were not at all good when we started out, and everyone knew it. Our team was counted out from the very beginning. However, we used tools that are now my laws of life to overcome all of our challenges and prove all those who doubted us wrong.
A language barrier is a major disadvantage to those who are foreign to a particular place or culture. The variances of languages can make it even more difficult for people to adapt to new cultures and environments. The girls raised by wolves in this story face this obstacle as soon as they move from an environment of wild animals to an environment of civilized human beings. In “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, the girls are forced to learn the human language since they only know how to speak “the Wolf”. The narrator, whose English name is Claudette, describes how “we [the girls] were all uncomfortable and between languages.” (Russell 229). According to the narrator, “it took me [her] a long time to say anything; first I [she] had to translate it in my [her] head from...
All the pressure i had put on me caused me to act out and not be myself. I constantly was in a battle between myself due to the pressure I was under, i just felt I couldn't be myself. Surely as that year went on I came into myself and that developed on into the next year. My junior year I was able to just be me, I no longer had to try so hard to be something else. I felt such a great deal of pressure fall off my once heavy shoulders. I was now at peace with myself, which really helped me do my job better. With those transitions i now found the game to be fun once again no longer was it just a job, no longer was it something i went out and did with fear in my eyes. I was myself just that fun loving guard from long island, and my game really showed. I always will remember my junior year as one of the best years of my young life. That year i feel was the turning point for me, the start of a beautiful journey in not only the game of basketball but in the game of
I soon discovered that the girls on the “A” team were a close-knit group and were not exactly thrilled that a player from the “B” team was now playing with them. I had already learned that hard work leads to success, so I made it my business to win their respect. I went from riding the bench to becoming a starter. One of my coaches had a saying that still sticks with me. “Success breeds success” he used to tell us. He was right! My game became like a snowball rolling down a hill. The girls who had ignored me soon became my teammates in the truest
I figured that I had grown about five inches since my freshman year and had gotten stronger it might be time to play basketball competitively once more. When November rolled around I was on the varsity team, but unfortunately my basketball skills was not up to par. It was tough at first, because I was a new face on the team, and the guys on the team had a great chemistry that they had built up throughout the years. After a few weeks had rolled by, I realized that I would not be in the rotation.I told myself that the team’s success is more important than my personal desired statistics.I decided to make the most of my role on the team. It was a tradition for the guys who were not in the rotation to contribute to the game in some way, guys did this by preforming stunts after significant plays and momentum shifts in the game in our favor. This was great because the crowd loved and it and more importantly my teammates fed off of the
a profoundly different world of its own: a world with its own language, its own
She realized the value of her language when she lost it and now treasures it. The kind of Spanish she speaks is neither English nor Spanish, but both. It is overflowing with culture from Medieval Spain, France, Germany, etc., just from the origins of the words. It is her pride and a representation of herself, fighting and living. In conclusion, in addition to Lera Boroditsky’s article proving that the structure of language affects how we think, the articles by Eric Liu, Amy Tan, and Gloria Anzaldua show how language is a foundation for a person’s culture, pride, and self.
and so this could be the reason for the content of her poems. I think