* This is a satirical poem written
to show the patent absurdity of the reasons given by the police or government
spokespersons for people’s dying in detention.
• During the apartheid era, prisoners
were held in detention.
• A number of people died because
of beatings by the police.
• The reality of the situation is
the horror and the brutality of the murders in detention.
• The speaker uses the same
sentence structure,
* firstly, to create
dark comedy by means of the increasingly entangled
details;
* secondly, to echo
the reports of the police in order to emphasize the number
of deaths in detention and show how
often the police lied about it.
• The structure of the poem
parodies statements made by government officials in a newspaper and/or a news
broadcast. It reads like an official document.
• The statements lack any depth or
elaboration.
• Verbs such as ‘fell’, ‘hanged’
and ‘slipped’ suggest the lame quality of the official explanations offered by
the authorities.
• There is no hint of sympathy.
• A tragic event is made to appear
insignificant.
• The lack of full stops adds to
the inconclusive nature of the statements, which lack sincerity; it helps with
the flow of ideas; it is an activist’s protest against the government.
• The ridiculous excuses were
presented as facts.
• The speaker starts each sentence
with the pronoun, ‘He’ in order to contribute to the sense of absurdity.
• He shows that police/authorities
would portray the victim as the agent of his own death or the victim of a mere
accident.
• This would dispel any suspicion
that the security police and the prison authorities should be held liable for
the prisoners’ deaths.
• The tone of the poem is sarcastic/scornful/ironic.
The speaker shows this by manipulating the language to suggest that earlier
claims could be accurate, but were not, and the absurdity of the later points
suggests this.
[Consider a neutral/indifferent
tone, if well substantiated.]
• The details of the
excuses/explanations are just apposed/organised in an increasingly ridiculous
manner, highlighting the dishonesty of the official versions of events.
Thank you for this brilliant explanation
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ReplyDeleteYou have a wonderful blog. This is really worth to read and it helps a lot of people to learn new information. Please keep on posting. Thank you.
Macy
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You don't even say who wrote the poem or when.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your insight on this poem really detailed and helpful
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