The Call Of The River Nun Analysis

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THE CALL OF THE RIVER NUN AUTHOR : GABRIEL IMOMOTIME OKARA I hear your call I hear it far away: I hear it break the circle Of these crouching hills I want to view your face Again and feel your cold Embrace; or at your brim To set myself and Inhale your breath; or Like the trees to watch My mirrored self unfold And span my days with Song from the lakes of dawn I hear your lapping call! Hear it coming through Invoking the ghost of a child Listening, where river birds hail Your silver-surfaced flow My rivers’ calling too! Its ceaseless flow impels My foundring canoe down Its inevitable course And each dying year Brings near the sea-bird call The final call that Stills the crested waves And breaks into the…show more content…
The way of life of these people is the River Nun. As a child, the persona used to have this way of life. Thus, in the poem “The Call Of The River Nun,” the poet was trying to remember his life as child born at the bank of the River Nun. In this beautiful lyric, which he wrote in the Enugu of the Udi Hills fame, he expresses his nostalgia for his birth place, the Delta area, symbolized in this poem by the River Nun, whose call the poet hears from far away, breaking the circle of crouching Udi Hills. This can be seen in stanza…show more content…
The poet is feeling sad as he tries to remember the happy experiences he used to have in his childhood at his birth place- the River Nun. FIGURES OF SPEECH/ LITERARY DEVICES 1. Personification: the River Nun (birth place) as a lover whom the poet is anxious to go back home and meet 2. Symbolism: * Rivers and boats represent individual’s destiny and the passage of time. * The River Nun is used to symbolize the birth place of the poet which he is nostalgic to go. 3. Enjambment: the poet used run-on-lines throughout the entire poem to bring out the meaning of the poem. 4. Repetition: “I” was used in the first three lines of the first stanza and also in the first lines of stanzas two and three. The poet used this to emphasize his personal relation to the River Nun (his birth place). This, he further emphasized by the repeated use of “my” and “your” in the whole poem. “I hear…” is also repeated in the first three lines of the first stanza. STRUCTURE The poem under study is a five stanza poem with varying number of lines. The lines of the poem are of average length. It is also observed the ideas expressed in one line runs into the next, thus there are run-on-lines or enjambments. The
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