Telephone Conversation -Wole Soyinka

Telephone Conversation

-Wole Soyinka

Poem:

The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. "Madam" , I warned,
"I hate a wasted journey - I am African."
Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.
"HOW DARK?"...I had not misheard...."ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?" Button B. Button A. Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar.
It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis-
"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT" Revelation came
"You mean- like plain or milk chocolate?"
Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted
I chose. "West African sepia"_ and as afterthought.
"Down in my passport." Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness chaged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece "WHAT'S THAT?" conceding "DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS." "Like brunette."
"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?"
"Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet.
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused-
Foolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black- One moment madam! - sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears- "Madam," I pleaded, "wouldn't you rather
See for yourself?"

Wole Soyinka’s “Telephone Conversation” is an eloquent exchange of dialogue between a dark West African man and his British landlady that inexorably verges on the question of apartheid. The poet makes use of the most articulate means to air his views, through that of a telephone conversation, where there is instant and natural give-and-take. It exhibits a one-to-one correspondence between the two. The interaction between a coloured and a white individual at once assumes universal overtones.

At the outset, the poet says that the price seemed reasonable and the location ‘indifferent’. Note that as a word, even though the word “indifferent” denotes being ‘unbiased’, it is a word with negative connotations. However, as we come across the Landlady’s biased nature; the word ‘indifferent’ gains positive overtones, as it is better than being impartial. The lady swears that she lived ‘off premises’. Nevertheless, the very aspect of his colour poses a problem to her, far from her promise to remain aloof. Nothing remains for the poet, he says, but confession. It gives a picture of him sitting in a confessional, when he hasn’t committed any crime….his crime is his colour, his remorse is solutionless. He tells the lady that he hates a wasted journey. Perhaps his words connote more than he literally signifies. The poet seems to be tired of his life conditioned by racist prejudices. As he mentions that he is a West African, the lady is crammed with silence, but a silence that speaks volumes. A telephone is an instrument that primarily transmits voices, here it becomes a medium for silence also. The so-called civilized world, has these silent powerful issues that need to be voiced. Here, the silence echoes. It is a silence that is the consequence of her sophisticated upbringing. However, her prejudices transcend her to primitivism, living in the superstitious narrow-mindedness of caste and colour.

When the voice finally came, it was ‘lip-stick coated’,well made-up and diplomatic to suit an affected atmosphere. The inevitable question finally comes cross:” ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?”The poet views it as button B or Button A. The question places two alternatives before him: dark or light; The truth or lies. The first option would obviously shut off all doors to him. The term Button B also is the button in the public telephone box to get the money back. Button A is the one to connect the call. The poet first ponders on Button B to get out of his predicament. He then realizes that escapism is not the solution, and decides to face the situation. The words: “Stench /Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak” signify the claustrophobic nature of the questions rather than the atmosphere.

The colour ‘red’ in “Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered” forebode caution. The questions were too naked to be true. The speaker at last brings himself to believe them. His response is very witty: “You mean–like plain or milk chocolate?” This is the most apt response as dark chocolate is certainly more tempting than plain chocolate. Her disinterested approval of the question was like that of a clinical doctor made immune to human emotions through experience. Human pain and misery its own saturation point; after a certain point people tend to joke at their own agony. As the saying goes: Be a God, and laugh at Yourself. The speaker therefore begins enjoying the situation and confuses the lady on the other side. He asserts: “West African sepia”, to further confuse her.

Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece. “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding
“DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”
“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused–
Foolishly, madam–by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black–One moment, madam!”–sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears–“Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather
See for yourself?”

The last lines verge on vulgarity, but simply out of outrage. The mixed feelings, the random and broken sentences, the lack of coherence of speech, the question-answer mode are all typical of a telephone conversation that reverberates more than it sounds.

Telephone Conversation

WOLE SOYINKA
1963

INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
POEM SUMMARY
THEMES
STYLE
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
CRITICAL OVERVIEW
CRITICISM
SOURCES
FURTHER READING

INTRODUCTION

Wole Soyinka's poetry has often been described as a powerful and serious agent to social change. His themes are primarily concerned with the promotion of human rights and African politics. At the same time, such poems as "Telephone Conversation" reveal a lyrical understanding of the rhythms and resonances of language balanced with humor and a deeply felt compassion for the human condition. Appearing initially in the collection Modern Poetry from Africa (1963), the poem is a provocative interrogation of racial prejudice, misguided civility, and the power of language to create ghettos of race and of spirit. Negotiating elegantly between the subtleties of irony and the social criticism of sarcasm, "Telephone Conversation" always maintains a thoughtful distance from the emotional minefields of its subject matter, transforming itself into a poem that sets aside anger and frustration in favor of humor as a means to achieve a deeper understanding and spirit of integration and harmony.

Out of Soyinka's large body of work, "Telephone Conversation" is one of his most well-known and most often anthologized poems. It may be found in Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, edited by Thomas Arp and Greg Johnson, published by Thomson in 2006.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka was born in Isara, Nigeria on July 13, 1934 (Wole is the shortened Form of Oluwole). A member of the Yoruba tribe, he was well schooled as a child in the stories of tribal gods and folklore, mostly because of his grandfather, who was a respected tribal elder. Soyinka's parents represented another powerful influence in the young boy's life. His mother was a convert to Christianity and his father was headmaster at the local British-model school. Not surprisingly, Soyinka as a youngster was very familiar with the tensions that defined colonial Africa in the early decades of the twentieth century, as tribal culture collided, sometimes violently, with the imperatives of British colonizers.

Soyinka took up writing very early in his life, publishing poems and short stories in the Nigerian literary magazine Black Orpheus before leaving his homeland to attend the University of Leeds in England. He returned to Nigeria in 1960, the same year that the country declared its independence from colonial rule. A prolific writer, Soyinka gained prominence initially for his work as a playwright of such politically motivated works as The Swamp Dwellers (1958), The Lion and the Jewel (1959), and A Dance of the Forests(1960).

It was during this same prolific period that Soyinka's "Telephone Conversation" appeared in the 1963 collection Modern Poetry from Africa. Two years later, he was arrested for allegedly forcing a radio announcer to report incorrect election results. Soyinka was released three months later, after the international writers group PEN made public the knowledge that no evidence had ever been produced in support of the arrest. He was arrested again two years later for his vocal opposition to the civil war that was threatening to split the country along longstanding tribal lines. Accused of helping Biafran fighters buy military jets, Soyinka spent two years in prison, despite the fact that he was never formally charged with any crime.

During his imprisonment, much of it spent in solitary confinement, Soyinka kept a prison diary, which was published in 1972 as The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka. He also wrote a trilogy of nonfiction books that trace the trajectory of his life and family: Aké: The Years of Childhood (1980), Isara: A Voyage Around Essay (1989), and Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: A Memoir, 1946-1965 (1994).

Following a period of self-imposed exile, Soyinka was among a group of pro-democracy activists charged with treason for his criticism of the military regime of General Sani Abacha. Facing a death sentence in Nigeria, he spent many years lecturing throughout Europe and the United States, including stays at Yale and Cornell University, where he served as the Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991. It was during these expatriate years that Soyinka wrote Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture and The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (1996). In 1999, he turned his attention to the role of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness.

A poet as well as a dramatist and essayist, Soyinka has published several collections, including Idanre and Other Poems (1967), Ogun Abibiman (1976), Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988), and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002).

Internationally recognized for both his writing and his advocacy of democracy and civil rights, Soyinka has collected an impressive catalogue of rewards and honors, including the John Whiting Drama Prize (1966), the Nobel Prize for Literature (1986), and the Enrico Mattei Award for Humanities (1986). Soyinka continues to travel the world speaking on the behalf of the oppressed and the marginalized.

 

POEM SUMMARY

Lines 1-10

"Telephone Conversation" is exactly what its title promises: an imagined conversation between a African man and a presumably white landlady with accommodations to rent. Some of the idioms in the poem mark the general geography of the poem as England, most likely London. The city saw a substantial influx of African immigrants throughout the post-war decades, a period that also saw a rise of racial tensions in the country, so such conversations would not have been unfamiliar.

The poem opens with the African speaker clarifying the essential information about the location, the cost, and similar business details. The landlady is initially described as being of "good-breeding," a standing that makes her questions about the color of the speaker's skin seem suddenly and dramatically out of place. Specifically, she wants to know if he is light or very dark skinned, a distinction that seems to carry particular weight within the racial atmosphere of the day.

Lines 11-18

From this pointed and clearly prejudicial question, the poem moves smoothly between the thoughts of the speaker as he considers the question as a political statement and the landlady's insistent repetition of the same questions or variations thereof. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes a painful accumulation of ironic miscommunication and blatant racism. The more the speaker tries to answer the questions, the deeper the exchange slips into irony as the speaker answers the woman with cool logic that clouds rather than clarifies the situation. At first comparing himself to chocolate, for instance, the speaker settles on describing himself as "West African sepia," a term he knows will further confuse his listener.

Lines 19-35

As the speaker's ironic tone takes hold of the conversation, he begins to describe various body parts, from his hair to the soles of his feet, in an effort to explain to her that he is, like all people, several different colors. The final lines of the poem carry a double-edged message. The first is clear: making a judgment about a person's character based solely on the color of their skin is the key absurdity of racial prejudice. The second layer of the closing lines underscore the meeting of absurdity with additional absurdity, an approach Soyinka often brings to his explorations of such situations, as the speaker invites the woman to "see" for herself all of the varied colors of the body parts he catalogues.

THEMES

Racial Conflict

"Telephone Conversation" is a dramatic dialogue in which a person of color responds to the racial prejudices of a woman with whom he is trying to negotiate rental accommodations. As the poem begins, the speaker's well-educated and polished voice, as heard on the telephone, make him acceptable to the landlady, but when he turns to the crucial moment of "self-confession," the truth of racial conflict comes to the foreground. The landlady clearly does not want a tenant of color, yet at the same time is trapped by the code of civil conduct that will not allow her to acknowledge what might be considered an uncivilized racial prejudice. The cluster of assumptions articulated by the well-bred landlady gather into an almost textbook definition of racism. She is xenophobic (exhibiting an irrational fear of foreigners, such as the African caller). She engages a vocabulary of racial stereotypes (making hasty generalizations based on skin color or ethnic background), and her unwillingness to rent to a man of color reinforces a policy of racial segregation or what has been called ghettoization (the practice of restricting members of a racial or ethnic group to certain neighborhoods or areas of a city).

But even as she weaves her way through a series of deeply prejudicial questions, ranging from "HOW DARK?" to "THAT's DARK, ISN'T IT?" the woman reveals the confused underside of racial attitudes. At no point in the poem does the speaker internalize the sense of inferiority that is being projected upon him, nor does he react in anger to her narrow-mindedness. Instead, he engages language in a calm and highly sophisticated manner, elevating the poem from diatribe or attack to a much more effective end of allowing readers to see the world through the absurd lens of racial prejudice.

Poetry and Politics

Although the school of New Criticism struggled to keep the worlds of politics and poetry at arm's length, a poem such as "Telephone Conversation" is a reminder that poets in some parts of the world, or of certain ethnic or racial backgrounds, do not get to choose one side of that divide or the other. Their very existence is politically charged. For a speaker like the one in Soyinka's poem, the politics lingering behind such seemingly benign words as "dark" and "light," for instance, are partly the pressures that threaten to fragment a community and that resist a spirit or imagination that might want to promote a sense of wholeness or integration. Words, especially when used as labels, divide the world of Soyinka's poem in the same insidious and powerful ways as any political agenda might.

It is this potential for divisiveness that the poem's speaker attempts to undercut in the closing lines of the poem, when he effectively breaks down the landlady's powerful (but unstated) fixation with the word "dark" through his own list of the various shadings that might clarify for her the abstraction of darkness. As the speaker notes, he is simultaneously a man who is "brunette," "raven black," and, in a wonderful twist, "peroxide blonde" on the palms of his hands and soles of his feet.

STYLE

Satire

Satire is a technique that uses humor and irony to undercut misguided behaviors or to censure social and political attitudes. From its origins in the writing and culture of the ancient Greeks, satire has remained a powerful tool of moral judgment. The tone of satiric literature ranges from the detached irony of Soyinka's "Telephone Conversation" to fully expressed anger and vehement contempt. Given that most satire relies heavily on balancing humor and word play with criticism, it is appropriate that irony is one of its chief tools.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

·         Given that the tensions explored in Soyinka's poem stem in large part from the collision of British (colonial) and African (colonized) cultures, research the history of the colonization of an African country of your choice. Construct a timeline that traces the major shifts in colonial presences, the key dates and events that led to the various shifts, the shifts in both geographic (borders) and cultural (language, religion) makeup, as well as any other aspect of the history that you feel is significant.

·         "Telephone Conversation" is a poem that is full of colors, not only of skin but of voices and buses, for instance. Write an essay in which you discuss the meanings of each of the colors mentioned, and the importance of what or whom they are attached to.

·         Write a poem or series of poems that attempt to capture the subtleties and complexities of some of the political or social issues that dominate your community or your country.

·         Set up a formal debate in your classroom that takes this proposition as its starting point: "Poetry is an effective medium for making people aware of racial prejudice and social injustice."

The satiric voice in Soyinka's poem is put in place through a series of linguistic and thematic juxtapositions. While the speaker notes that the landlady to whom he speaks is of "good-breeding" with a voice that is "lipstick-coated, long gold-rolled," he is also quick to attach a series of words to her that carry an overabundance of negative connotations. She is described as "clinical" and as having a "light impersonality" to her demeanor. Elsewhere in the poem readers are told that her accent "clang[s]" and that her silences are "ill-mannered." All of this takes place in a setting that is itself a circumstance that contributes to the satire, being described variously as "rancid" and as appealing as the sound and feel of "squelching tar."

At its best, satire reveals a sophisticated versatility of speech, a strong moral center through which one might speak to social and cultural improprieties. Put simply, satire is defined, in large part, by many of the same traits that readers can attribute to "Telephone Conversation."

Ironic Detachment

The figure of the speaker in "Telephone Conversation" is clearly positioned as an observer of his own situation. He is not a victim nor is he angry, despite the blatant racial prejudice that he is forced to negotiate throughout his telephone exchange with the landlady. Oscillating between humor and irony, the speaker deploys his words with a cool and logical double edge. More specifically, the speaker brings literal and intended meanings into opposition during the course of the conversation, as when he attempts to clarify the situation by comparing himself to chocolate or, in the closing lines, when he asks the woman "wouldn't you rather / See for yourself?" It is in the opposition of these meanings (the man certainly does not want himself likened to a food, for instance) that Soyinka unleashes the criticism of the poem. Standing back from the immediate emotions of the moment, the speaker effectively illuminates the woman's racial assumptions, hidden usually behind what Tanure Ojaide, in his book The Poetry of Wole Soyinka, catalogues as "her sophistication, affectation, and artificiality." Indeed, it is the cool logic of the speaker's response that at once establishes the woman's social status and gives readers an insight into the confused politics and insensitivity of the landlady.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Colonialism in Africa

The history of European dominance of Africa through military and economic strategies is a long and often bloody one. The 1880s marked the intensification of conflicts between European countries for control of the regions of Africa. Especially prominent countries in the imperial project for the last part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were France (especially in West Africa), Great Britain (East and South Africa, the Gold Coast), Belgium (the Congo), Spain (the Western Sahara), Italy (North Africa), and Germany (East Africa). The struggle for control of African territories was driven in part by the rich natural resources of the various regions of the continent as well as by a desire to control crucial routes for overseas trade. The political and economic tensions that circulated just below the surface of the struggle for Africa informed many of the international crises that led to World War I. The rush to colonize the Congo, the rebellions that threatened the building of the Suez Canal, and the seemingly perpetual battles over control of the Nile headwaters are three examples of many crises provoking incidents that are usually recognized as precipitating the political tensions that erupted into war in 1914.

Furthermore, the cultural impact of Colonialism was immense. The varied cultures of each African locality were subsumed by the culture of the country occupying that locality. In short, native Africans were treated as second-class citizens by the ruling class of European colonists. Thus, it is important to note that though Soyinka's poem explores the speaker's experiences of racism and displacement in a foreign country, that speaker would likely be subject to similar experiences in his own birthplace as well.

Immigration to Britain

In Britain, prior to the 1900s, there was often tension arising over governmental and cultural attitudes towards immigration. Originally these tensions grew from hostility towards peoples of a different culture and appearance, most notably towards members of the growing Jewish community and later towards immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. Due to the tensions and concerns created by immigration, the British parliament decided to restrict immigration in 1905, a decision that has repercussions even today as the country continues to maintain very strong legislative control of immigration levels.

Following World War II, Britain suffered through a slow and often debilitating return from the economic hardships of the previous decades. The economy was able to rebuild, albeit slowly, and the signs of recovery proved a beacon to immigrants who were seeking refuge or a better lifestyle in the United Kingdom. Under the British Nationality Act of 1948, the British Government decided to embark on a major change in the law of nationality throughout the Commonwealth. All other Commonwealth countries, with the exception of Ireland, had their own British subject nationality status. Since the middle of the twentieth century, racial tensions have ebbed and flowed in Britain, driven in part by the economic climate of the day and by the realization that the large populations of different nationalities, notably South Asians, Africans, East Asians, and Eastern Europeans, have reconfigured Britain into a country populated predominantly by people with a foreign heritage.

Racism in Britain

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, racial policies and trade practices were a central mechanism for controlling a disenfranchised work force comprised largely of Scottish and Irish workers. As immigrant populations expanded through the early twentieth century, so did the discriminatory conduct, which had to take into account the presence of an increasing number of workers of Jewish heritage as well as immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe.

COMPARE & CONTRAST

·         1960s: When the speaker mentions pushing "Button B, Button A" he is referring to the fact that in old style British public payphones a caller had to press a series of buttons once coins were deposited in order to maintain a connection with the person on the other end of the phone.

Today: Public payphones in Britain allow callers a number of options (standard, text, and email) as well as accepting a full range of payment methods, including credit and debit cards.

·         1960s: The speaker refers to himself as "African," which is a reductive and overly simplistic term that underscores the nature of the racial stereotypes that saw the whole of the African continent as an undifferentiated continent lacking any form of ethnic, social, or cultural distinctions.

Today: Although such racial stereotyping still occurs in Britain and elsewhere, the language has changed slightly to reflect national or regional distinctions. The term African would be replaced, for instance, by a more regional (South African) or national (Nigerian) reference.

·         1960s: African immigrants in Europe and African-Americans in the United States mostly live and work in segregation.

Today: While racial segregation is not as explicit as it once was, it still exists to some degree on account of economic inequality.

Britain was also amongst other early capitalist societies to utilize the slave trade, which positioned itself neatly to benefit economically from the dramatic African migration that came to define the 1950s. African immigrants provided a cheap labor force that could support the post-war recovery. Despite these obvious and far-reaching economic benefits, African communities within the larger metropolitan areas were subordinated and often reviled, their members treated as second class citizens. Racial tensions, fueled by a growing sense of powerlessness, increasingly public and vocal discrimination, and a sputtering economy, reached a flash point in the 1980s, a decade marked by rioting in various parts of the country. It was reported by the "Joint Campaign Against Racism" that there were more than 20,000 attacks on non-indigenous peoples living in Britain in 1985 alone. More recently, racism continues in forms of public displays of racial intolerance, a rise in racially motivated crime, and increasing tensions between immigrant populations and local law enforcement agencies.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

In his retrospective study of The Poetry of Wole Soyinka, Tanure Ojaide notes that as one of Soyinka's earliest poems, "Telephone Conversation" differs substantively from his later poems. "In the early poems," Ojaide argues, Soyinka "is interested in individuals in society, and there is a psychological and social bias" that is clearly articulated. Additionally, he "presents the characters and their mental attitudes for ridicule, sympathy, and amusement. The voice" of these early poems "is critical," the language "simple, and the major poetic devices" brought into play include "sarcasm, irony, hyperbole, and repetition."

Significantly, Ojaide goes on to state, this is a poem in which "the voice of the poet is distinct. There is no bitterness in the voice, no sense of urgency in the light criticism, no vision of inhumanity as in the later poems." This is a poem that focuses on the absurdity of an individual who behaves badly and whose own ignorance of the racial diversity in which she lives leaves her out of touch with society.

It is the reconnection to the realities of a world divided on political and racial lines that many other critics comment on when considering Soyinka's poetry. In his article "Poetry as Revelation: Wole Soyinka," critic D. I. Nwoga, for instance, celebrates Soyinka's poetry for its power to establish for readers "a new reality," providing "a new background to [an individual's] understanding and judgement of particular things, actions and situations." Moreover, Nwoga continues, these are poems that redirect "our wills and planning for the future." Writing for Transition, Stanley Macebuh bends this critical emphasis in a slightly different direction, arguing in his article, "Poetics and the Mythic Imagination," that Soyinka's "abiding concern" in his poetry has always "been with myth" rather than with history or politics, and more specifically with developing a kind of mythic "significance for contemporary life in Africa." Soyinka is, as Alan Jacobs asserts in "Wole Soyinka's Outrage: The Divided Soul of Nigeria's Nobel Laureate," "a writer of spectacular literary gifts" who has made his mark on contemporary literature in part due to his profundity as "an acclaimed lyric and satirical poet."

Telephone Conversation Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka is a renowned African novelist and poet.  Soyinka was the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.  “Telephone Conversation” is a simple and amusing poem.  As the title suggests, it is a conversation over ‘phone between an African and a white lady who is the owner of the apartment in London.  The narrator is looking for a rented apartment in London. In this poem, the poet is able to portray the hypocrisy and cold inhumanity of the white lady who rejects the African only because he is ‘black’. Thus the poem is a strong satire on racial prejudice.

The speaker of the poem is an African. He is well educated, cultured and willing to pay the rent demanded by the landlady. At first the white English land lady is very happy that a tenant has come to stay in her apartment. The location of the building is not good. But the African is not worried about it. For him, the rent is reasonable and the landlady promises that she is living in another place. Therefore the Nigerian is also very glad to get such an apartment in London City. But he has a big problem. His skin is black. So he is afraid whether the white lady likes him or not. The flora and fauna in Nature have different colours. The colour of the skin is not a problem for animals, birds and other objects in the world. The sky is blue, the rose is red, the oak is black, the crow is black, orange is yellow, there are black dogs and cows and here the colours are blessing and beautiful. Nature is blessed with all the colours given by God. But man hates man if his skin is not white. So the African confesses to the white lady that he is an African. It is a rude shock to the white lady as if “African” is a criminal. There is a prolong silence. This silence hurts the African. He is insulted. Humanity is insulted. After some time she asks politely ‘how dark he is’?  She enquires whether he is light black.

She does not say that she does not want an African. Instead she asks again whether he is dark or very light. She uses two terms such as plain or milk chocolate to describe his dark skin.  He tells her that he is “West African sepia in his passport”.  Again there is a long silence. Her words were compared to stinking or polluted air because her words are poisonous.

Now the African knows that he will not get the apartment, because the landlady does not want a black man as her tenant.  So the African tells her that the colour of his face is dark brown (brunette), but unfortunately certain parts of his body are very dark. The palm and sole of his feet are semi dark. But the bottom is raven black because of friction by sitting and requests her to see it by herself personally. At that moment the white lady knows that she is insulted by the African and she angrily puts the ‘receiver on the thunderclap. Thus the poem proves that it is the white people who believe in the colour prejudice are always insulted. The colour prejudice boomerangs upon the white people themselves!

Answer in a paragraph of not more than 100 words

1.       Comment on the use of satire, irony, sarcasm, imagery and pun in this poem

“Telephone Conversation” is a vehement attack on racial discrimination. The poet uses various poetic devices such as satire, irony, sarcasm, imagery, pun, alliteration and assonance have been used to bring home to the reader the hypocrisy and racial discrimination of the white landlady. “Location indifferent”, Nothing remained but self-confession”, “Caught I was foully” are all used in ironical tone. The speaker very politely tells the English landlady over phone that he hated a wasted journey- he was an African is irony because he speaks that he is an African is like a crime.There is also pun here because African means a criminal. “Plain or milk chocolate” is also a pun.“Silence for spectroscopic flight of fancy” is an example for double alliteration of ‘s’ and ‘f’. The satirical poem reaches its climax with the words ‘wouldn’t you rather see for yourself?” shows the irony in judging people based on the colour of their skin.