COMPARISON AND CONTRAST OF TWO POEMS
Introduction
The paper compares and contrasts the poem "On the Subway" by Sharon Olds and "Telephone Conversation" by Wole Soyinka. The analysis will be based on the thesis statement that both poems show how skin color promote covert inherent racism.
Analysis
The poem “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds explore the issue of race and whiteness. Sharon Olds is a white woman poet. She is describing a story about a black boy. The poem reveals that there is a complex intersection of race and gender. The poem seems to depict the fact that despite the struggle to discourage racism, there is what is called liberal guilt. At the first lines, the narrator indicated that the boy’s feet are huge, in black sneakers laced with white in a complex pattern like a set of intentional scars. This clear reveals that the narrator has preconceived notion towards the boy based on his color. The white narrator in the poem realizes that she has been making stereotypical assumptions about the “black” “boy”. She realizes that she has been making assumptions that the boy could be a mugger because he is poor. This is evidenced by the lines:
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And he is black/and I am white, and without meaning or/trying to I must profit from his darkness.” However, the narrator further feels that her assumptions that black is always a mugger were wrong when she says “There is/no way to know how easy this/white skin makes my life” (Olds, 1985).
These lines reveal that it is not easy to determine the effective dimensions of racism and that complete empathy is unachievable. The poem reveals that there is a sense of liberal guilt and that the narrator admits that racism is everywhere (Olds, 1985). If racism is to be solved, the liberal guilt should be addressed. According to the poem, whites may be struggling to remain racially neutral but have an inherent prejudice which often makes them guilty and end up revealing their stereotypical assumptions consciously or unconsciously.
Wole Soyinka, on the other hand, gives his perception towards racism by demonstrating how telephone conversation between an African man and a presumably white landlady with accommodations to rent. Although the setting is not clear, it is undisputable that the telephone conversation is taking place in one of the western cities experiencing a substantial influx of African immigrants (Soyinka, 1998). The city seems to be experiencing racial tensions and this is depicted by the nature of the conversation. From lines 1 to 10, the African speaker is trying to clarify the location, cost, and similar business details. The landlady, on the other hand, wants to know if the potential tenant is light or very dark skinned. As the conversation gets deeper, the landlady seems to have an insistent repetition of the same question rather than giving information as to whether the house is available or not (Soyinka, 1998). It reaches a point when the speaker had to describe body parts in an effort to explain to her that he is a human being. This is evidence in lines 19-35. Towards the end of the poem, it is apparent that the landlady uses the color of the skin to make a judgment about a person’s character.
The two poems share a lot of similarities. First, both poems demonstrate how whites are judging blacks based on the color of their skin. Sharon Olds, for example, judged the black boy on the subway as a mugger despite the fact that she had no information about the boy. She believes that blacks are poor and can only earn their source of livelihood by mugging or stealing. Similarly, the landlady in the “Telephone Conversation” judges the potential African American based on his color and the nature of body parts. As Aditchie puts, if people rely on only one side of story about another person or country, they risk a serious misinterpretation (Aditchie, 2009). The landlady, for example, ends up misunderstanding her probable tenant because she bases her judgment on color. Similarly, Sharon Olds later realized that her judgment may be wrong.
References
Aditchie, C. (2009). “Chimamanda Aditchie: The danger in a single story." Retrieved from TED at http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story
Olds, S. (1985). “On the Subway.” Nation, 241(9), 284. Retrieved from: http://vlib.excelsior.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&a mp;db=a9h&AN=11024246&site=eds-live&scope=site
Soyinka, W. (1998). “Telephone Conversation.” New Crisis, 105(3), 60. Retrieved from: http://vlib.excelsior.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=tr ue&db=ulh&AN=3639785&site=eds-live&scope=site
