Telephone Conversation

740 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Problems with racism in literature

The poem 'Telephone conversation' is staged by a black man who is looking for a flat but ends up phoning to a landlady who is racist but tries to be polite in finding out whether he is he is a dark or light one. When he first speaks to her he feels awkward as he feels he has to confess that he is African. Also I think he feels as though he has been in the same position before somewhere else and he knows what is expected from people like the landlady he is speaking to. When he tells her that he is African she becomes speechless and wants to know if he is light or dark brown. She puts her words in a more polite way of asking but they are not to the point of what they could be which makes it more harder for the answers. His response to the question 'How dark?' 'Are you light or very dark?' is to get her back and deliberately embarrass her by putting in words of what she meant when she asked that question. When he answers the question this time he gives her a sarcastic answer that he just made up to be awkward. She then becomes stuck and wants an immediate answer as you can see by the tone of her voice. The poem also has a number of amusing lines to bring in some humour "by sitting down has turned my bottom black" Again when he gives her this information he is trying to embarrass her. The whole conversation seems like a war between then because she is racist and he gets her back by embarrassing her. The poem is very much like a play showing everyday life as a black person who wants to rend a room from a racist landlady. I think that the poem is quite effective as it is a more modern and day to day situation rather than "Strange Fruit". Both the poems are featured on racial prejudice. I think that the telephone conversation would be more effective because it is more modern and likely to happen than walking through some part of a country and finding black bodies swinging from trees

The poem 'Telephone conversation' is staged by a black man who is looking for a flat but ends up phoning to a landlady who is racist but tries to be polite in finding out whether he is he is a dark or light one.

Show More
Related

  • An Analysis of Komanuyakaa Facing It

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    His outside actions of touching the wall and looking at all the names are causing him to react internally. He is remembering the past and is attempting to suppress the emotions that are rising within him. The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ... ...

    Read More

  • We Wear the Mastk by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

    768 Words  | 2 Pages

    The two poems are two extreme sides of the Negro mentality. They do not leave opportunity for other Blacks to move. They are both required complete conformity. The short story was about Blacks weighting their options. It shows that Blacks can think logically about their action.

    Read More

  • Imagery In 'You Ve Got To Start Somewhere'

    1188 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through the use of these terse statements, she allows it to have more meaning than some novels do as a whole. In lines 5, she says “A letter in the mailbox.” What about the letter in the mailbox? Landau wants us to focus on that letter, because people do not write letters anymore. In line 19 are her shortest sentences throughout the poem stating, “I had the idea. Put down the phone.” It is ironic in the sense that her shortest lines in the poem contradict each other. She discussed the letter in the mail, and then discusses about the phone she is using and how she needs to put it down. The sentence “I had the idea” also adds to the thought that in her world, people are thinking using the mind that was wonderfully created without the help of technology. In a busy world of words and moments happening so fast, these short sentences appeal to the readers in letting us take in the words one by one. The purpose in her using these short, easy to understand sentences is to emphasize the idea that it is the little things that we need to most appreciate. She gets to the point and proves that in our current world we tend to say more than we should, when just couple of words can do the same. In her writing, it is evident that the little sentences and words are what make the poem overall that perfect dream she wishes she were part

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast How It Feels To Be Colored Me By Langston Hughes

    1849 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is true that old days were really hard to live in, especially if the person was dark skin. This poet’s main idea of this poem “ I, too” was that, he wanted to let people know what he, and most of the African American people were going through. He wanted to let people know that color should not define your personality, and people should accept the fact that people with dark skin were humans just like others. People should have accept them and treat them equally and respectfully. Also one of the things I liked in the poem was that, he was using word sing as a expression of a word of talk, he was not really singing but he was saying it

    Read More

  • The Duboisan Concept Of Double Deciousness In Graduation By Maya Angelou

    802 Words  | 2 Pages

    When the speaker gets up the first thing she notices is that he is black, and she ends it with this quote, "We have come over a way that with tears has been wanted, we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered¨. Suddenly, she started to feel that blacks are back on top. She expresses that sentiment when she states, "we were on top again, as always again. we survived." She thinks that no matter what blacks always overcome any obstacle that comes in their way. This is a sharp contrast from what she was thinking earlier. At first she was thinking it wasn't beneficial to be black because of the racism she would have to face the rest of her life. Then its a sudden change when she hears the black speaker and she feel like blacks will always

    Read More

  • Racism In Sherman Alexie's 'Gentrification'

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    He makes connections between himself and an African woman carrying a vase on her head when he performs a similar action, “My only option was to carry mattress on my head, like an African woman gracefully walking with a vase of water balanced on her head…” This isn’t the only time he makes a reference to African culture: he points out the difficult to pronounce African name of one of the neighbor’s sons and goes on to identify him by said description. When he is shunned, he draws a parallel to American explorers on foreign land, emphasising how much of an outsider he feels himself to be, as quoted above. He even calls himself “pale”, as if his light skin is a negative, unsightly

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast A Black Man Talks Of Reaping And From The Dark Tower

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    The theme throughout the two poems "A Black Man Talks of Reaping" and "From the Dark Tower" is the idea that African American live in an unjust

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Juju Magic Songs For The Black Nation

    1626 Words  | 4 Pages

    The tone of the poem itself seems to be one pointing out and acknowledging the things that make him Black. It’s us looking out to the east and saying thank you for making us great. He talks about the way we look and how evil the west really is. He gives thanks to the African gods which the west took from us and gave them different names.

    Read More

  • White Lies Natasha Tretheway Analysis

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the poem “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway the narrator opens the poem with vivid imagery about a bi-racial little girl who is trying to find her true identity between herself and others around her. She tells little lies about being fully white because she feels ashamed and embarrassed of her race and class and is a having a hard time accepting reality. The poem dramatizes the conflict between fitting in and reality. The narrator illustrates this by using a lot imagery, correlations and connotation to display a picture of lies. The narrator’s syntax, tone, irony and figurative language help to organize her conflict and address her mother’s disapproval.

    Read More

  • Messages from Point of View in Langston Hughes’ I too

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    Another example of Hughes’s constant struggles with racism and his inner and thoughtful response to that is clearly seen when he recalls being denied the right to sit at the same table. His point of view identifies that he was not able to sit at the table because he was an African-American. Yet, he remains very optimistic in not letting his misfortune please what is considered the “white-man” in the poem. Langston Hughes’s states,

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Joseph Conrad's An Image Of Afric Racism In Heart Of Darkness

    1543 Words  | 4 Pages

    Telephone is a game that has quite often been used as an example of miscommunication. At the start of a line, a child says one thing to another, and by the time the information reaches the end, the message has been changed. The children will laugh, humored at the magic that has just taken place, but while this seems to be a fun game to them, the act itself has occurred in serious arguments outside of children’s activities. In “An Image of Africa: Racism in Heart of Darkness,” Chinua Achebe takes the ideas within Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and labels them as pure acts of racism. Conrad’s gruesome novella delves into the brutal world of the Congo under Britain’s imperialistic ruling. The character that readers follow is a man named Marlow,

    Read More

  • A Deeper Look: Langston Hughes's 'Ballad of the Landlord'

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ites a short 33-line poem that simply shows the barriers between races in the time period when racism was still openly practiced through segregation and discrimination. The poem captures the African American tenant’s frustrations towards the landlord as well as the racism shown by the landlord. The poem is a great illustration of the time period, and it shows how relevant discrimination was in everyday life in the nineteen-forties. It is important for the author to use the selected literary devices to help better illustrate his point. Each literary device in the poem helps exemplify the author’s intent: to increase awareness of the racism in the society in the time period.

    Read More

  • Musical Tradition In The Harlem Renaissance

    1609 Words  | 4 Pages

    The poem Ballad of the Landlord tells a story while bringing up a social injustice that existed in America. The poem begins by the tenant listing off broken aspects of the house that he had asked the landlord to fix. The landlord ignores these problems and insists that the tenant pay his ten dollar rent. The tenant says he will not pay until the problems are fixed. The landlord then threatens eviction and the tenant threatens to hit the landlord to quiet him. The poem ends with the reading of a headline “MAN THREATENS LANDLORD/ TENANT HELD NO BAIL/ JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL” (Volume 1, page 1316, lines 31-33). This poem brings up the social injustices. The landlord, police and judges are all white and the tenant is black, this leads to an unfair and racist ruling of the case. The idea of storytelling or folklore in poems was a way to bring up injustices in the American society. This technique in early African Americans poems was a precursor for the later poetry of the Harlem

    Read More

  • White Lies Poem Analysis

    441 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the poem “White Lies” the language of the poem creates an image of a young girl who is ashamed of her background.The language used in some parts of the poem point to the girl being biracial as well as a very light skinned biracial who appears to be white “light-bright” “near-white” “high-yellow”, and about how she tends to lie to the white people in order to not feel judged. She says she lives in uptown but she actually lives in a roughly built part of town “not in that pink and green shanty-fied shotgun section along the tracks.”. As she describes how easy it is for her to tell about where she lives “I could easily tell the white folks…” the image created is that people truly think she is white and their acceptance of her lies only makes her feel more apart of them so she keeps doing it.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Langston Hughes's 'I Dream A World'

    781 Words  | 2 Pages

    Author brings alive plentiful of images “whatever race you be” (10), “black or white” (9), in one world all should be shared and treated equally. Other images describe the beauty and purity of the new dream world: “peace its paths adorn” (4), no more of ‘greed sapping the soul’, and the ‘loving and joyful earth’. By drawing an image the ‘sapping of soul’ and the ‘avarice blighting our day’ author elicits graphic imagery, to bring on the repulsive feelings, as those are characteristic that stain us all, “whatever race you be” (10). Toward the end of poem (line 14) the ugly images are replaced with a simile: a picture of beautiful, ever-present, unbiased joy, compared to the beauty and uniqueness of a “like a pearl” (14). A pearl is something only white, rich people may have had, definitely not the poor black folks, and so it is with the joy, which poor blacks could only dream of. In line 6 author uses the taste imagery, ascribing ‘sweetness’ to the ‘freedom’ , perhaps because everybody would know how sweets taste and make one feel, and because of racism, black people would have no experience, what freedom is like, so the “sweet” is closest that they may

    Read More

More about Telephone Conversation

Open Document