Week 7 and 8 – SS2 First Term English Literature Notes

WEEK SEVEN

THE AVIL AND THE HAMMER. KOFI AWONOOR.

CONTENT

The poem talks about the experience of the poet on how to cope with modern trends. He found himself struggling for survival between the old and the new order .He believes that in comparison, the experience of the past that is, the old order, could be more acceptable than the present day ideas. He thus asks for away out from the gods. The African in a colonial situation is akin to a piece of metal which finds itself lodged between ‘the anvil’ and ‘the hammer’. ‘ The anvil’ represent the African tradition while ‘the hammer’ is the foreign culture. Both of them impact on African in the process of forging and transforming him/her into a new being.

THEMES

1. A forceful fusion
2. Conflict of the way to go.
3. Nation building
4. Tradition and modernity

    

WEEK EIGHT

NON AFRICAN POETRY

CROSSING THE BAR BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

CONTENT ANALYSIS

This poem is said to have been written in 1889. The poet, Tennyson, wrote it after a serious illness at sea. No wonder the poem treats death as a main issue. The poem reflects the mind of the poet who is about embarking on a voyage of no return. He is about crossing the bar, the bar that separate life from death. ‘Crossing the Bar’ has been used metaphorically to represent leaving the word for the great beyond, which in fact must become the lot of all the living.

THEMES

The following themes are found in the poem;

1. The inevitability of death.
2. Life after death.

    

POETIC DDEVICES

1. Metaphor: The journey between life and death is compared to crossing the sand bar.
2. Imagery: There are images of ‘the moving tide’; the sunset and the evening star’; twilight and evening bell’. Importantly, the image is created of a man (the poet) crossing from one end of a river to the other (i.e crossing over the bar that separates life from death).
3. Alliteration: There is repetition of some consonant sounds in some lines. E.g.

   Sunset and the evening star, (line 1)
   …..clear call (line 2)
   …..May…Moaning (line 3)
   …..Flood…Far (line 14)
   …..Face to Face (line 15).

    

Assignment;

 Discuss the poet’s attitude to death in ‘Crossing the Bar’.
Discuss the theme of hope in the poem.