Friday, February 4, 2011

Telephone Conversation

Hey guys! I'm back to write this post during Chinese new year. Alright, I shall keep the introduction short and sweet and get down to business. So please comment and ENJOY!

Q1. This poem is full of colours not just of skin, what do you think these colours signify?

The colours used in this poem signifies things. Firstly, " Plain or milk chocolate" gives the readers a image of the authors. Well, as chocolate is dark, so it basically tells us that the author is a dark-skinned person.

Secondly, when the author told the landlady that he is a African, there was " silence. Silence transmission". This shows that the landlady is very reluctant to rent the flat to the author as discrimination towards the blacks were common during that days.

Lastly, the colours used in this poem shows that the author is a African American and he did not liked to be discriminated by other people. This can be seen that the fact that he kept explaining to the landlady, he is not really "black" although he was black-skinned.

Q2. What does the dialogue in this poem reveal about these two characters ?

Firstly, when the author first saw and told the landlady that he was African, the landlady was immediately shocked and felt reluctant to rent this flat to the author.

Secondly, the author used many colours to describe himself in this poem to show the contrast between the landlady and the author as the author is a Black and the landlady is a White.

Lastly, the landlady might be found guilty for renting this flat to the author as there might a law that says whites are not allowed to rent flats to Blacks no matter how willing the whites are willing to rent the flat. In a nutshell, the poem shows a deep contrast between whites and blacks during that time seems to be due to the discrimination of the African American in the past.

Q3. The post dramatizes a battle, who ins finally and why?

In the end, the author wins the " battle". In stanza 1, the author insists that the landlady has to sell her flat by saying, " I hate wasted journey". This shows that the author will be very upset if the landlady does not rent the flat to him.

Then, the landlady discriminates him by saying, " plain or milk chocolate". However, the author does not take that as a defeat as he knew it would happen when he said that he is a African. Then, the author express his anger by the different types of red he used in the poem. In the last stanza, the author was really pissed at the landlady as he said," wouldn't you rather see for yourself" when the landlady kept asking the colour of different parts of the body of the author.

In conclusion, the author won the "battle". It was because he was very determined to be able to rent the flat and he was able to "out speak" the landlady.

3 comments:

Walteroi said...

Hey William , your answers are short , yet "packed" with stuff . You managed to simplify what would have been an essay type question into these short paragraphs . However , I don't really think you should use informal language on your posts such as "pissed" . This is just my opinion . :)

Sean Heng said...

Hi William! Nice blog you have here. Everything is neat and in order; there is no difficulties in finding posts. For this post, can I suggest you take one more look through it? You sometimes repeat yourself and state the obvious. There are a few spelling mistakes, but they are very infrequent. All these are just very minor problems, I think you can easily get rid of them and come up with a great post. Keep it up?!

Rixin said...

I feel that you should describe more about the other colors not just the skin color of the persona. You should have mentioned the "red" that was representing the anger of the author, at the same time the "gold" which represent the fact that the land-lady was someone rich.