Telephone Conversation Essay

510 Words3 Pages
Top of Form 'Telephone Conversation' by Wole Soyinka - analysis In ‘Telephone Conversation’, the poet conveys his disappointment and anger about being discriminated by the Caucasian unfairly just because he is an African by portraying the telephone conversation between himself and the British landlady. The poem is in the form of free verse. It is because ‘conversation’ isn’t something well-planned; instead, the speakers speak what they want during the conversation. Also, with the aid of end-stop lines and run-on lines, the outlook of the poem gives readers a sense of randomly formation, which fully suits the way of ‘telephone conversation’ flows. Instead of talking something about the price and things concerning the house renting, the two speakers talk about their skin color. This issue was bought up by the landlady at first. There was a pun, ‘indifferent’, to shows the intention of the landlady. From the word ‘indifferent’, the landlady seems not too aware who her house is rented to, however, she does aware. From what she asks the caller, ‘are you light of very dark’, she determines not to rent her house to an Africa, she’s obviously discriminating the dark people, which cause the speaker angry. It is then the man decides not to rent the house, instead of telling the woman how dark he is directly, he play word tricks on the woman. The poet describes the woman ‘lipstick coated, long gold-rolled cigarette-holder piped’, it seems that the woman is wealthy and well-educated, it’s a bit ironic, from the outlook of the woman, it seems that the poet want to convey the idea that the woman is good and ‘considerate’, however, the poet actually want to point out the outlook of a person doesn’t mean anything, the woman is actually arrogant and impolite in the view of the poet. The most sarcastic point is the woman doesn’t understand what the man means when he says
Open Document