englishcircle - Unit 3

"Blackout" by Roger Mais

Roger Mais was born on 11th August 1908 in Kingston in the early 1930. He began writing verse and short stories and later he became a committed supporter of Jamaican nationalism. His critique of British imperialist ideology. “Now We Know” was sent to prison for 6 months. He published two collections of stories “Face and Other Stories” and “Most of All Man” in 1942. “Brother Man '' is Roger Mais' best novel because it reflects all of the author’s varied talents. He died of terminal cancer in 1955 at the age of 49.

Critical Summary of the story “Blackout”

“Blackout” is a short story by the famous Caribbean writer Roger Mais. It is set in Jamaica in the West Indies. It focuses on the artificial division between race, class and gender. The story starts against a background of blackout in the city and the resultant atmosphere of discomfort and tension in the city. A white American woman is waiting at a bus stop and smoking a cigarette. It is the time of night and even street lights are not lit because of the war time policy of conserving electricity. But she is not bothered by the darkness. She is not nervous in spite of the tension prevailing in the city because she knows that a single scream from her will make the people rush to her help. A few minutes later a black man slowly approaches her and asks her for a light to light his cigarette since he does not have a match. She hesitates at first but then offers a lighted cigarette to light his. Instead of taking the cigarette from her stretched hand the black man comes closer to the girl and bends to light his cigarette. This seems awkward to the white girl and she disapproves his defiant behaviour but only thinks about it and does not say anything. The black man thanks her and returns her cigarette. The girl takes the cigarette but she flicks the cigarette away instead of puffing it. It shows straight away that she is racist and she does so because a black man has touched her cigarette. There is a moment of discomfort; the black man is angry at racist action but he controls his anger. The only thing he says is that if she had been a man his response to her action would have been quite different. The woman however feels quite uneasy and asks him why he was still there. He apologies and comments that he made her waste her whole cigarette. He doesn’t move and keeps talking about what the white people do to the black people in America but here in Jamaica there are only men and women and not whites and blacks. This reflects black man’s gender-based attitude which is not racist. As he talks she becomes even more uncomfortable. The conversation between the two then focuses on gender and race but he tells her that she is not his type of woman. During the conversation the reader can also notice that the woman has racist thoughts. After a while, he sees the bus coming and points at it. The girl gets on the bus and as it starts moving she controls her urge to look back at the black person; thinking about the society and worrying how uncomfortable and unacceptable it would seem. So, she does not look back while the man picks the cigarette from the gutter. His behaviour is that of a typical low-income person who would salvage things like cigarettes anyway possible.

Thematically speaking, the story portrays the attitudes of racism, gender inequality and class differences. The native black person thinks in terms of masculine and feminine and thinks himself superior to the white girl and even rejects her as his type to assert his supposedly higher masculinity. The white girl, however, shows racial thoughts and behaviour and is intrigued by black man’s behaviour towards her. The behavior seems unnatural and unexpected to her as compared to the behaviour of blacks in her own country, America. The white American girl notices only the colour of the skin when she sees this black person for the first time. Any other detail about this person loses importance once she notices that he is black. She considers herself superior to the black person and would not even puff a cigarette that has been used to light his cigarette by this black person. Both are representations of class differences too. The girl is rich and is casual in her attitude. This is evident as she flicks away an almost whole cigarette just because a black person has used it to light his; and when this person apologises for this she casually answers that it was nothing and hints that more could come. This reflects that the white girl is rich and also the fact that she is a tourist affirms this. The black person on the other hand is poor firstly because he is seen smoking a half of a clinched cigarette and secondly he picks up the flicked cigarette from the gutter as soon as he finds an opportune moment at the end of the story.

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION by Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka is a versatile African poet, dramatist, novelist and political thinker. He was born on 13th July 1934 in western Nigeria. He taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan. He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1986 for literature. He was the first African to receive the award.

Main idea of the poem "Telephone Conversation"

The poem 'Telephone Conversation' is a sad comment on the plight of African black people in the world. This poem tells us about racism which is the division of people on the basis of origin and colour of the skin. The writer himself is a black person from Nigeria and narrates an interaction over telephone between a white British landlady and an African from West Africa who needs a room on rent. The poem is set in London.

The title of the poem reveals that two people are talking on the phone. The beginning is on a positive note. The man is looking for a house on rent or lease. The man is satisfied with the rent, the location of the room and the privacy that the house will provide him. But in his heart this man knows that there can be apprehensions due to the fact that he is a black African man so he rings up the white land lady to confess (the word has been used ironically) that he is an African. As soon as she hears the word "African" there is silence at the other end. He thinks that the silence is the result of 'pressurized good breeding" but he is mistaken. Then after a pause, she asks him straight away to explain how dark he is keeping aside all formalities. At first the man thinks he has mis-heard something and asks the lady to make herself clear. She repeats the same words with varying emphasis. Her critical question makes the man feel awkward. He starts thinking that he is lost as if in a dream. He starts looking and feeling his way around and notices the red colour of the phone booth; button A, button B on the telephone machine and red coloured double-decker bus passing nearby. He can smell the stench present in the telephone booth and knows that it is all real. Metaphorically, he can feel the stench coming from her hypocritical words. He is looking for some image or idea to compare his colour with so as to answer the lady's question. Ironically he is the one who is ashamed by the tense silence now. He sarcastically repeats her question asking her if she would like him to compare himself with dark chocolate or milk chocolate. At last, he has a revelation and describes his colour as 'West African Sepia' as is mentioned in his passport. The landlady does not understand and asks again. He replies that it is like brunette and she immediately understands and takes it as black.

The insensitiveness shown by the white lady makes this black man disregard all his formality and now he has to mock her to make his point clear. The person seems desperate to make clear that he is not all black but the soles of his feet and palms of his hands are completely white. His bottoms however have turned erroneously black due to friction. As he senses that she is about to hang up on him he repeats his polite request to listen about his ears and requests a meeting in person. The telephone line is disconnected by the white landlady. So this poem describes in a funny and sarcastic way an interaction between a white racist woman and an African black person. The poem shows the apprehensive, hypocritical and racist attitude of the white people towards black people.

Theme/Main ideas expressed in Langston Hughes' poem Harlem

Harlem is a short poem written by Langston Hughes, an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. The poem derives its name from a large neighbourhood in the northern section of the New York City borough (city-district) of Manhattan. Many African American families saw Harlem as a safe place. They began to arrive here in large numbers in 1905. From the 1920s, Harlem became famous as a major African-American residential, cultural and business centre. It became the centre of what is known as the "Harlem Renaissance."

Langston Hughes, who himself lived in Harlem, entitled his poem "Harlem" because it focuses on the failure of the American Dream in the case of African Americans. The American Dream, which promised equality, opportunity, prosperity, success, and achievement for all, did not reach the African Americans. This is why Hughes' poem begins with the question: "What happens to a dream deferred?" He means that in case of the African Americans, the dream seems to have been postponed.

In the rest of the poem the poet muses about the nature of a "dream deferred." The "dream deferred" is the long-postponed and, therefore, is the frustrated dream of African Americans. This was a dream of freedom, equality, dignity, opportunity, and success. This particular poem does not define or give examples of the dream, but every American knows what the American dream was. Hughes therefore concentrates on the possible reactions to the postponement of the dream that the African Americans had also seen with the rest of their countrymen. The first five reactions in the poem are largely passive. They range from the drying up of grapes into raisin, oozing of pus from a festered sore, the stinking of rotten mutton, and the gathering of crust on a sweet syrup.

But the last reaction is active and literally explosive. If a dream is deferred for long and not realized, it begins to haunt the mind of the dreamer as a heavy burden. It crushes his very personality. But worst of all, sooner or later it explodes like a bomb which destroys itself as well as everything around it. Though all of the images used in the poem are not violent, each image is powerful enough to make the reader smell, feel, and taste the discarded dream. According to Langston Hughes, a discarded dream does not simply vanish. Instead, it passes through a process of frustration and decay before reaching the stage of an explosion in the form of a revolution.

Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Her books center on themes that include racism, identity, family, and travel.

Theme of the poem "Still I Rise" (From Internet: www.sparknotes.com)

Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou is primarily about self-respect and confidence. In the poem, Angelou reveals how she will overcome anything through her self-esteem. She shows how nothing can get her down. She will rise to any occasion and nothing, not even her skin color, will hold her back.

The Resilience of Black Women: The speaker of “Still I Rise” is a Black woman who powerfully expresses her strength and resilience in the face of an oppressive, racist society. The theme of resilience runs like a thread through all nine of the poem’s stanzas. In some cases, the resilience she evokes applies to Black Americans in general. For instance, in the first stanza, the speaker defies attempts on the part of dominant, white society to misrepresent Black history. Later, in the sixth stanza, she refuses to let racist words, glances, and actions negatively impact her sense of self-worth. Finally, she ends the poem by situating her contemporary experience in a longer history of Black resilience in the face of slavery and disenfranchisement (stanzas 8–9). In other cases, however, the speaker’s emphasis on resilience relates to Black American women in particular. In stanzas 2–5, for instance, she insists on her right to carry herself with a sense of pride, expressed through an upright posture and a confident stride. Later in the poem, she expresses the sense of personal empowerment she derives from her sexuality (stanzas 7–8). What unites each of these topics is a tone of defiance, which the speaker uses to express her own strength and resilience.

Defiance of Oppressive Social Expectations : A major theme of “Still I Rise” is the need to defy oppressive social expectations. This theme emerges through the speaker’s tone more than her actual words. Consider the opening lines, which initiate the speaker’s confrontational tone: “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies” (lines 1–2). Although the words plainly state a misdeed committed by this “you,” it’s the speaker’s use of the verb “may” that makes these opening lines so powerful. The use of “may” at once extends an invitation and anticipates a refusal, as if to say: “You can try all you want to harm me, but it won’t work.” Whereas the speaker’s words clearly the indict the “you” for their wrongdoings, it’s her tone that most clearly evokes the empowerment she derives from defying this “you.” A similar phenomenon occurs in the poem’s fourth stanza. There (lines 13–16), the speaker asks a series of rhetorical questions that simultaneously acknowledge and reject common stereotypes about how Black women should act:

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

The speaker uses rhetorical questions to powerful and ironic effect, implicitly refusing to subscribe to the oppressive stereotype of Black women as weak and demure. Once again, the sense of defiance emerges primarily through the speaker’s tone.

The Power of Reclaiming History : At the opening and closing of the poem, the speaker references the importance of reclaiming one’s own history from the misrepresentations of dominant society. The speaker emphasizes the violence of misrepresentation in the first stanza when she says, “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies” (lines 1–2). With these lines, the speaker references the adage that history is told by those who wield the most power. As a member of a marginalized and oppressed group, the speaker recognizes that the most prevalent version of her own community’s history is full of dehumanizing half-truths and harmful reductions. It is precisely these half-truths and reductions that dominant society uses to “trod [the speaker] in the very dirt” (line 3). In the poem’s final two stanzas, however, the speaker makes explicit references to Black American history in ways that actively recuperate it and use to develop a clearer sense of self (lines 29–32 and 39–40):

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

. . .

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

The speaker directly connects her own experience in the contemporary moment to the long history of slavery and Black oppression. From this history of her own people, the speaker derives a clear sense of identity that also gives her the strength necessary to survive ongoing oppression.

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