Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka - Lecture Notes

hello namaskar wam you&#39;re watching study with sudhir and in this video I&#39;m going to be teaching the telephone conversation poem which is part of the ISC Class 12 English literature syllabus this is the first poem in your syllabus for Class 12 now what kind of a poem it is is it it&#39;s a poem that focuses on and exposes racism in modern day Society especially as an offshoot of colonialism okay so let&#39;s get started I have made some notes and it would make it easier for you to do see it and then understand the basic context of the poem and thereafter I will get into the line by line explanation I&#39;ve done a lot of research uh for this poem and I can tell you this video will be the best available anywhere I can assure you of that pretty confident about that so here on the screen you can see the poet his spelling is w l e but when I found out I was told that it is pronounced as W soena okay as in W ye um a very well-known Nigerian poet he is very well acclaimed and this picture I have put basically for you to understand what a telephone booth looks like because you&#39;re all the mobile phone generation so you may not have an idea what a typical phone booth especially in Western countries looks like so it will be usually red in color and use it&#39;s it&#39;s a enclosed space you normally have a door okay and it&#39;s a very tiny kind of a space maybe a 4x4 kind of Dimensions okay so U now what is about the poet is a well-known Nigerian poet playright and essayist he was born in 1934 he was born in 19 34 now these are basic details that just kind of help you understand the context you know where is this poet really coming from in the sense that what is his mental makeup as a result of which he has written on a complex uh theme like this one he was awarded and this is very important he is a Nobel laurate he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in the year 1986 making him the first African laurate his poetry is a powerful reflection of his life and experiences as he explores the themes of Oppression and resistance please try to use all these words in your answers especially the long format 10 marks answers these are important words which will help Elevate the quality of your answers and the society wherever there is a society where a country dominated by whites has colonized a country where there is predominantly um the population ation of people of color that&#39;s where racism essentially takes root so there is a sense of clash of cultures there is a sense of clash of identities now briefly about the poet and of course you should also read uh what is written in your book now many of his poems are deeply personal experiences uh and that&#39;s what makes his poem especially this one very powerful um they are shaped by his time in jail or in Exile in fact he was exiled he to leave Nigeria his Noble acceptance speech very interestingly I found was titled this past must address its present that is what has happened in the past it must address its present as he focused on the criticism of aparte which you know happened in many countries most prominently in South Africa now his writing is powerful as he Blends sharp wit with critique of political Injustice in his homeland he also Blends Western literary form with yaruba mythology prevalent in Nigeria that draws on gods now this is more generic okay not specific to this particular poem now what is it about the poem now these cover the themes so please understand what are we getting in this poem and what is the overall theme that is being spoken about now it satires racism now there are two ways of uh dealing with uh complex uh themes like racism either you take a very serious view or you take a sacal view so he takes a sacal view of racism and he addresses the Discrimination experienced by people of color by Africans in particular now the poem is essentially about a phone call which takes place inside a phone booth of the kind that I showed you in the first photograph between a land lady who is not shown and this particular speaker who is black in color he&#39;s wanting to rent an apartment okay that&#39;s what he wants now till such time that the lady realizes I mean she&#39;s kind of willing to rent the apartment to this particular person but then he tells her that he&#39;s a man of color he&#39;s African okay and then follows a series of questions which kind of expose her extreme racist attitude okay they expose deep racial Prejudice this is an important phrase and the speaker tries to mock her by uh you know trying to highlight what kind of color are you talking about chocolate color dark chocolate light chocolate you know that kind of a thing we will get into all those details and when you do that about the skin of anyone&#39;s color like you know in a very uh we think it&#39;s a joke but it&#39;s not a joke when we make fun of someone&#39;s color according to me it&#39;s it shows your own very sick mindset when you are uh making fun mocking someone&#39;s color someone&#39;s weight someone&#39;s height or lack of height you know various things you do that it does not reflect so much on the person you are mocking it reflects on your own inability to show any kind of sensitivity so the big lesson that all of us need to take from poems like this is how we need to be sensitive human beings no one is perfect if the other person who you are mocking as someone who is dark complexion right it&#39;s quite possible that the person can always turn back and mock you for maybe being plump maybe being sh maybe uh for anything right so there could be 101 reasons maybe having a very long nose right uh or maybe uh not having healthy hair okay or maybe deciding to go Bal like me like people one of the I mean I always find it very amusing I used to get a little irritated earlier you know when people in order to just try to get under my skin would say it tucking please realize and I&#39;ve said this before also please realize there are lots of people in this world who suffer from cancer and when you undergo chemotherapy you lose hair so there are a lot of people in this world who donate hair so that they can be made into wigs for those cancer patients please remember that so everyone can have a backstory please do not mock anyone without knowing that person&#39;s Story please remember that okay let&#39;s get back to the poem The Speaker responds by mocking her Prejudice in order to highlight that you should not characterize people by the color of their skin because you&#39;re dehumanizing them okay now what is about the poem the style of the poem is what I want to talk about humor and irony two important words which you should definitely use in your answers and he uses satile humor with irony in order to expose the absurdity that how absurd how silly it is to have this kind of a narrow thinking that if you are a man of color I may have sec second thoughts about renting the apartment to such a person and that&#39;s what makes this poem a very powerful critique of racism in the modern day world and what are the themes that have been explored the struggle for equality because obviously the speaker wants to be equal wants to be treated as equal not as someone who is inferior just because his color does not match that of the person who is more fair complexion right this I found very interesting and I thought I should highlight this to you because I think this can also come maybe as a five marks question I mean if I were the examiner I would and uh it would make for a very interesting I mean what&#39;s the significance I mean it could have been a face tof face conversation right why is it set inside a telephone boo he could have been talking from let&#39;s say mobile phone while walking on the streets he could have been talking from uh the place where he&#39;s staying earlier why does the poet put it inside a telephone booth H it means of course that he does not own a phone on his own which is why he&#39;s having to do this from a place where he has to pay by the meter now the telephone both more importantly it symbolizes because it&#39;s a very confined space what I showed you in the photograph it symbolizes confinement so it is a small space limited space and the confinement in this case is both physical literally speaking it&#39;s also emotional because the speaker is feeling rather claustrophobic because of the kind of questions the land lady is asking him that&#39;s the speaker&#39;s identity is question and it is very closely scrutinized she&#39;s listening to him very closely the answers that he provides the information that he provides the boot therefore conveys a sense of isolation he&#39;s alone in that world there&#39;s a lot of traffic going around him but he&#39;s alone inside that boot so the the the setting of the poem that way is extremely significant he&#39;s physically separated from the land ready maybe many kilometers we have no idea where that particular house is apartment is so it kind of also it she can&#39;t see him he doesn&#39;t see him but he&#39;s trying to she&#39;s trying to find out what is the nature of the color of your skin so there&#39;s a slightly impersonal nature of their conversation and that is highlighted more by this particular limited space telephone booth okay and they&#39;re also discussing they&#39;re not having a friendly chat they don&#39;t know each other that way right they&#39;re discussing something as formal as a rent agreement right because he wants to rent the apartment so there&#39;s a sense of impersonality and that whole setting inside the telephone booth therefore is extremely apt I hope uh you got the idea of why is it so and being confined also highlights the possibility of reject rection you are alone you are rejected and when you are rejected the world will not know only you will know that you have been rejected and you have been rejected possibly because of the color of the skin I mean that may have happened after the conversation I mean the person may himself not be interested in taking the apartment a phone booth also restricts the speaker&#39;s ability to react physically it&#39;s a very limited space what can he do even if he shouts the world outside possibly cannot hear him so he can only listen to the questions and answer them right he has to suffer the biases that the land lady subjects him to so he cannot control what the land lady will say and the phone booth The Limited space inside the phone booth kind of emphasizes underlines this kind of a feeling that the speaker feels at that point in time the phone finally is also a means of communication but here and please use this kind of lines the phone becomes an instrument through which Prejudice is spread from one person to another the other person at the other end of the line is made to feel small because of the color of the skin which the land lady cannot see is only told about okay I hope I managed to convey to you what exactly is this poem all about and that would make it easy for you now to understand what we are going to discuss okay now let&#39;s get line by line explanation the first five lines the price please keep a book with you just makes it easier and you keep your notebook so that you can take down the notes now the price seemed reasonable location indifferent the land lady swore she lived off premises nothing remained but self-confession ma&#39;am I want I hate a wasted Journey I&#39;m African now a lot of information in the first five lines of this poem now the meaning of the word reasonable reasonable means something which is fair you know the the rent seemed reasonable you know okay TI there was I mean she was not quoting a very Hefty rent per month so it seemed reasonable something which I could afford to pay at the end of the month indifferent means there was she wasn&#39;t really interested in him she was interested in renting the apartment renting out the apartment she couldn&#39;t care less who this person is at least that&#39;s what the tone initially conveyed because she obviously thought that she was talking to a fair complexion a white person right uh off premises uh off premises means that she herself did not live in the same building where the apartment was located so which is good so these three reasons he writing as good from his point of view that land lady was not there there no kitkit kind of thing on a regular daily basis key why is the tap open why are the lights on uh why have you left the door open you know those kind of things which a landlord or a land lady can create trouble for the uh tenant on a daily basis since she did not live in the same building it was better she did not seem very bothered about you know his background right and the most importantly the price also seemed reasonable uh but at that point in time he said now there was the it was the time to make a self confession self-confession is admission of fact that is he&#39;s trying to admit something he&#39;s trying to admit something now let me explain this further now we have seen that the poet starts the poem starts with the details of the apartment okay the location was also so fine uh you know the uh the location was fine the price was reasonable the landl SW that she did not live on the uh building you know uh everything seemed kind of okay at this point in time the land lady assured him that she did not live in the same building so he needed now to confess his identity so he told the land lady that he was African okay now the reason he gave was that he did not want to make the journey and then for her to see him when he comes with all his luggage and then real AR you are African I have a problem with that right so it&#39;s quite possible he has had these kind of rejections before which is why despite the location being okay despite the rent being uh reasonable despite the land lady not living on the premises he wanted to make this kind of a disclosure Ure of his identity of his color okay so while the first three lines suggest that there is nothing wrong there are no red flags at all in the first three lines red flags there&#39;s nothing wrong there but the moment you hear the word he wants to make a self-c confession your antenna as the reader should go up that something is wrong because the African identity seems to be a problem area and his problem probably aware of the potential of discrimination on the basis of color maybe because of past experiences okay maybe in the past he has had such negative experiences now it&#39;s kind of a little uh strange that he uses the word self-confession because when you kind of talking to someone for the first time what&#39;s the word you use let let me introduce myself you don&#39;t say let me confess with someone you are talking to for the first time right so uh that itself makes you feel that he&#39;s aware or he&#39;s having this thing somewhere at the back of his mind that being an African will be seen as a negative and therefore he needs to disclose that openly uh so you know in the whole dynamic between the land lady and the speaker it puts him at a slightly weaker position understood now uh he it also kind of conveys that he knows that the land lady must be warned about maybe because of past experience that he has faced that it is something which he must warn the land lady about that he&#39;s a man of color okay and uh you know I don&#39;t think he feels ashamed of being African but he knows how the other person is likely to perceive that okay so he&#39;s been practical maybe a bit cheeky that you know I hated I hate a wasted Journey so he&#39;s being very practical I don&#39;t like to you know I don&#39;t want to come let&#39;s say 10 miles or 20 miles and come there and you to see me and say oh you&#39;re African no no no we don&#39;t give it to Africans right in many places in India also there is discrimination which is done which I will not not get into but you know this is another form of discrimination and in fact that&#39;s something which you should be aware of because these days those kind of questions are also sometimes asked in the examination um his self-confession is perhaps based on his previous encounters and maybe he has struggled to find an apartment uh rent an apartment in the past uh so the first five lines why are they important because they have a very conversational kind of a tone uh and that&#39;s what telephone con ation telephone conversations are usually not very formal conversations there&#39;s this there&#39;s an element of casualness about a telephone conversation and if you see the lines flow into each other the use of the literary device of enam vent okay where the lines kind of flow the sentence or phrase from one line of poetry continues to the next without a full stop or U any other form of punctuation to signify the end of a line so it is to kind of give you a certain flow and that&#39;s how telephone conversations usually are obviously you&#39;re not going to say I will speak this line full stop I will speak this line comma then it will continue no it doesn&#39;t work that way so it gives you a sense of momentum okay um also if you when a phone boot you have a meter running you may not be aware there&#39;s a meter running per second you are kind of uh uh you have to pay the money right so now after the first five lines you also this thing oh I&#39;m African now immediately you realize that this particular disclosure of his identity is going to be a turning point it&#39;s also going to be an important detail and it establish the theme of the poem you realize that this is not just any other ordinary telephone conversation I hope the first five lines are I&#39;m explaining in detail because so that you don&#39;t have any doubt you know I&#39;m trying to explain it in so much of detail so that everything is crystal clear to you okay now lines 6 to9 there is silence at the other end the moment he says I&#39;m African there is silence at the other end silenced transmission of pressurized good breeding now transmission is a word that you usually read in physics H now U it is used to convey the passage of electrical signals um to an instrument which could be let&#39;s say a television it could be a laptop it could be a desktop you know those kind of things good breeding uh conveys upbringing which which means that she has had good education she has good manners good etiquette so that&#39;s what good breeding conveys voice when it came lipstick coated long gold rolled cigarette holder piped pipped caught I was fly now cigarette holder if you know uh in the past U especially women who smoked they would hold it put the cigarette inside a holder okay they would not kind so that the lips did not touch the the butt of the cigarette they would do it and it was considered a fashion upmarket kind of an accessory if you have seen any of the old time Western movies English movies European movies in particular you would have seen that it&#39;s a thin tube in which the cigarette is held while smoking pipped means a short high pitched sound this is referring to the this is an imagery of sound it&#39;s a sharp high pitch sound caught I was fly fly means in a rude manner in an unpleasant manner now the word silence it&#39;s follows I am African in the Fifth Line it conveys the impact after he has disclosed his African identity and the poet further explains the reaction of the land lady by describing the silence further he&#39;s not just saying silence he&#39;s then going on to describe and giving details about The Silence by saying it was silenced transmission of pressurized good breeding right we suggest that she was what does it suggest that she was trying to maintain a facade an exterior of good manners she was not immediately saying she&#39;s not saying that okay she&#39;s not reacting like that she&#39;s keeping silent that conveys good manners but he can make out from the tension of that silence on the telephone line she&#39;s not too happy about it she&#39;s a little taken a back by that particular detail so so she&#39;s trying to maintain a facade of politeness but her good manners are preventing her from immediately reacting in a negative Manner and the use of the word pressurized but the use of the word pressurized it kind of exposes it because it tells us that it is forced pressure means you are forcing it so she&#39;s forcing herself to not react immediately so she&#39;s reacting with silence which conveys to the other person what she is thinking but she&#39;s not expressing it in a negative manner I hope you are understanding it so it is the the the word pressurized conve that it is forced it is artificial it&#39;s a facade okay facade spelling great now when the land lady finally speaks speaks the poet uses the poetic imagery to describe what she may have uh looked like right lipstick he&#39;s almost imagining her this is how she must be looking he&#39;s kind of creating she may not look like that but he&#39;s imagining what she would have been like okay at the other end of the telephone line lipstick coated you know with a thick shade of lipstick with that cigarette holder which would be gold which again conveys wealth okay up Market sophistication high society and it also creates an immediate contrast with um the African tenant because you know cigarette holder P you know U lipstick quoted it conveys a slight sense of hotess okay U hotty attitude and it conveys a contrast with the African tenant who is kind of you know more happy about rent location okay land lady doesn&#39;t stay in the building he&#39;s more bothered about very day-to-day kind of things you know very matter of fact kind of things whereas he&#39;s of a slightly upm Market society and the voice kind of convey um conveys some sense of sophistication now CAU I was fly here he&#39;s talking about himself uh um he feels as though he has been exposed in a slightly unfair manner because of the disclosure that he has made and the reaction to that disclosure right um and also if you see the first line the first line he said reasonable so at that time he seemed to be happy about what he was getting into but now he feels CAU ey was fly because he feels that now he&#39;s her silence is judging her on the basis of his color of his skin so it makes him feel a little vulnerable it makes him feel a little vulnerable that you know his position has become weak VAV that of the land lady even though the land lady has not said anything because of her silence itself she&#39;s making him feel vulnerable okay so you know this sentence caught I was fly it becomes a very powerful critique and it kind of it&#39;s an indictment of racism please use these kind of phrases I use that in the opening notes also you can take those screenshots it&#39;s an indictment of racism it you know it shows that people can be made to feel small even when you don&#39;t speak a word even with silence you can actually do that I hope line n it&#39;s clear said it in so many words are you light or are you very dark that&#39;s what she asked him right so he wants he repeats a question to convey his sense of disbelief that she in modern society could actually ask a question like that right um so you realize and the and the speaker also realizes that everything for the land lady boils down to the color of his of the prospective tenant&#39;s skin so it shows a very insensitive way of looking at a person now the next few lines convey he&#39;s thinking how do I react to this question are you light or are you very dark how does one react to something like that right that&#39;s what he&#39;s thinking about even though earlier it seemed as if you know he was used to that but he&#39;s obviously not happy about this kind of a query where she wants to know the exact shade of his color so uh button B button a what does this mean now in the phone boo there are this buttons it could be literal thing but button B and button a and this is what my research shows uh it could be a reference one of course that that he&#39;s at a public Booth but metaphorically speaking that&#39;s a literal meaning metaphorically speaking button B could signify the color of the speaker skin B could mean black button black uh so the landl is inquiring whether he is dark or very light button a could be the other end of the spectrum that&#39;s why she&#39;s he&#39;s using T first you know black button a now a could be reference to white or let&#39;s say Anglo Saxon okay so that could be button a uh so uh that&#39;s what she wants to know and then he says stench of rancid breath of public hide and speak hide and seek but here since he is talking about a telephone conversation he kind of uses that to say hide and speak so button B and button a are conveying racial discrimination it&#39;s almost like categorization are you in button b or are you in button a you&#39;re trying to say line line you know you&#39;re trying to discriminate okay where you are kind of judged differently based on the color of your skin U and it also kind of conveys the absurdity you know you are reducing it to a button so stench means bad smell okay I hope you know that you know uh stench means bad smell smell rancid means something which has got spoiled so it conveys the unpleasantness of the place so rancid breath means that the air of the place the air around in that place is filled with the unpleasant smell of people&#39;s breath that conveys that he&#39;s in a very crowded public space he&#39;s inside the phone booth but there are a lot of people there and the smell out there does not seem to be fresh it seems to be rather unpleasant then hide and speak as I said it&#39;s a play on the phrase hide and seek it suggests that the conversation is something to be concealed hide what you speak hide what you speak because of the racial discrimination he is uh experiencing okay because of the racial discrimination he&#39;s experiencing now the word red is about the color around him the red red is the color theme of that entire setting and the red is the dominant color which is why you see it being repeated several times the telephone booth is red in color right the red pillar box is most likely a post box letter boxes are also red in color right red double tired om i buus squelching tar this is refering to a double decker bus the double decker bus okay double decker bus and it is moving on the road squelching tar tar is the reference to the um Road it&#39;s squelching is the sound imagery which he is talking about also the touch as a result of the touch the bus on the tar which obviously refers that it is a very hot day and the tar is soft so when the bus is moving on the tar it is making some kind of a squelching sound okay so it&#39;s also the sense of sound it&#39;s also the sense of touch between the friction between the bus tires and the tar of the road it was real so he&#39;s saying this is what was happening shamed by ill-mannered silence surrender pushed dumpfounded to beg simplification consider she was wearing the emphasis the red double decker bus on the tar tar is what in color tar is black in color right tar is black in color so the red is dominating so it also conveys the domination of the white people over the people of color so that&#39;s what this is an important metaphor Red Double tired Omnibus quing tar so it is at one one level a literal meaning of what he&#39;s seeing right in front of him while he&#39;s inside the telephone booth the metaphorical meaning is what I had conveyed there is use of imagery there is also the metaphorical meaning that it is conveying the domination of the white people over the people of color it was real means you know he&#39;s kind of trying to tell you and me that this is real it is actually happening I&#39;m actually hearing something like this in my ear on the telephone line so the question which has been asked to him may seem extremely silly and absurd but the speaker is trying to tell you reaffirm to you that he&#39;s not imagining it it&#39;s actually being said I&#39;m shocked that something like this could actually be said you know you say sometime no I&#39;m shocked you asked me such a question that&#39;s what he&#39;s trying to convey so it&#39;s rich in imagery and detail Visual and sound the red color everything the imagery the sound and the feeling of t shamed by ill-mannered silence now the speaker feels a sense of Shame Shame by ill-mannered silence okay uh the shame is it&#39;s coming because of the lady&#39;s sense of racism because she&#39;s extremely racist in her attitude and because of the tone in which she asked the question are you light or are you very dark um initially he had felt a little shamed by her silence and then she asked this kind of a question so he&#39;s feeling a very power powerless at this point in time he&#39;s feeling very defeated by the situation as it is developing so he wants to engage in a conversation but her whole attitude seems to make him feel extremely small and vulnerable surrender pushed this is an important line and a complicated line surrender pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification the speaker is so taken aback by her initial silence that he&#39;s rendered speechless by her silence followed by that question that he&#39;s rendered speechless dumpfounded means speechless you know he&#39;s not able to say anything okay so he then feels compelled to ask for a clarification beg simplification means he wants her to ask the question in a simple kind of a manner he wants to know you know what is it that she really want even though she has asked it pretty straight but he wants it to be further simplified so he&#39;s taken by her question but she wants it to be simplified considerate she was wearing the emphasis so he says considerate and this is extremely sarcastic he&#39;s saying that oh she was concentrate why because she ask the question rephrase the question so he says uh that she became considerate she began to vary her emphasis uh while kind of clarifying that so this is extremely sarcastic so her supposed consideration is in rephrasing her question from how dark to are you light or very dark so wearing the emphasis highlights the superficiality of her attitude the superficiality of her consideration and if you see what he has done is to leave a dash at the end it means that he&#39;s leaving the sentence incomplete and it implies that the speaker does not believe that she&#39;s really being very sens uh sensitive or concentrate and there&#39;s a sense of anger are you dark or very light Revelation came you mean like plain or milk chocolate her accent was clinical crushing in its light impersonality now the land lady now ask a very direct thing are you dark that&#39;s what he said she&#39;s asked are you dark or very light because that&#39;s what he says are you light or very dark are you dark or very light she has kind of changed it okay so uh the speaker uses a metaphor maybe a bit sarcastically to describe skin color to various shades of chocolate he&#39;s almost being very flippant he&#39;s almost you know he&#39;s trying to make it more absurd and silly than her initial question itself so this metaphorical comparison that he&#39;s making to different shades of chocolate highlights the what does it highlight it highlights the absurdity of a question because he thinks in today&#39;s society you should not be even asking something like that the other important thing that he highlights is the dehumanizing effect of reducing individuals on the basis of their color making them feel small because of the color of their skin so by equating skin color to different shades of chocolate he&#39;s kind of making it absurd he&#39;s highlighting the absurdity the superficiality the ignorance of the land lady that she&#39;s asking a question like that so he&#39;s trying to be a little humorous so her accent uh I&#39;m not sure whether it it is accent or asent I we need to check I personally feel it is asent not accent okay her asent means to say yes sir asent was clinical crushing in its light impersonality uh that her response is very clinical she&#39;s not understanding the humor or the sarcasm in his line so she&#39;s being very clinical so she&#39;s having a very unemotional and a very detached kind of a response to what he has asked chocolate Okay so she you realized that she does not want to engage in any kind of you know understanding the tenant better she&#39;s having a very unemotional and a very detached kind of a conversation it&#39;s very transactional that&#39;s all nothing beyond that there&#39;s no other kind of relationship that she wants to get into and there&#39;s a lack of empathy there is lack of sensitivity towards the speaker the phrase crushing in its light impersonality it points to the impact of the landlady&#39;s response on the speaker okay even though the speaker tries to inject some kind of humor some kind of wit some kind of sarcasm in the way he responds using the metaphor of the chocolate the land lady&#39;s very clinical response completely disregards what the speaker is trying to do uh and this kind of further underlines the very dehumanizing effect of what she seeks to no line 21 to 26 rapidly wavelength adjusted I chose so he kind of adjusted and he kind of wavelength means a particular Chain of Thought wavelength uh not necessarily in the way we understand in physics it&#39;s a Chain of Thought you know immediately as she kind of reacted he kind of adjusted Ed what he had to think and he uh chose West African cpia now cpia is a reddish brown color this is the dictionary meaning cpia is a reddish brown color associated with monocrome photographs of the 19th and the early 20th centuries earlier black and white color that was known as the CPI it was more of a monochrome more close to black and white uh than to color so he said I am West African cpia okay uh and then he added you know one more line you know thought about it and added down in my passport that is that&#39;s the way I look in my passport uh and then when he receives a very disinterested reaction from the land lady uh that&#39;s when he decides that you know that&#39;s what I will react like you know West African sepia down in my passport so it kind of West African seia it kind of conveys some kind of pride in his African uh race and Heritage it also kind of takes points to his pride in his own culture U it is some kind of an assertion of his African identity best African identity so he&#39;s feeling very proud of of it okay so in the face so he&#39;s fighting that blatant racial discrimination by emphasizing his African identity okay this is again an important so this is how he&#39;s kind of in a very subtle manner he&#39;s standing up to that lady by saying West African cpia um so uh down in my passport reveals that probably it&#39;s quite possible that he may have faced these kind of encounters before also you know there could have been uh what we generally refer to as racial profiling what happens is that I&#39;ll just explain especially this happens in Western countries police they go and go to a particular neighborhood and say that okay 80% of the people here are of this particular color or this particular Community right so you kind of racially profile like in we call it communally profile right so you profile a particular area neighborhood locality saying that okay this has this particular Community or race in a larger proportion as compared to the others right so it&#39;s quite possible that he has had that kind of an experience of discrimination racial discrimination while he was traveling which is why he refers to his passport because that&#39;s official document spectroscopy you know silence for spectroscopic flight of fancy now spectroscopy I&#39;m sure all of you students of physics as well also know that it involves splitting of light you would have read this in class 10 now it means the dispersion of thoughts of the lady after realizing that the speaker is a black person he realizes that you know the moment that realization has dawned on her that the person she&#39;s speaking to is African so that is kind of you know those thoughts are splitting in her head at that point in time so he uses this very term of physics silence for spectroscopic flight of fancy till truthfulness changed her accent uh hard on the mouthpiece the land lady&#39;s response to the speaker description of their skin color is initially one of Silence indicating her confusion or familiarity with the term West African cpia so she takes some time to process that and then Rea okay uh the spectroscopic flight of fancy what is this flight of fancy that we are talking about it kind of suggests the ladies attempt to understand what he actually means by West African cpia okay uh and she&#39;s trying to understand that which is why that momentary silence flight of fancy could also mean an unrealistic idea which I mean he&#39;s using it in a very mocking manner you know he&#39;s trying to mock her by saying she must be having some flight of fancy you know some fanciful idea that she would Express after that however the land lady then responds still truthfulness changed her accent so she says what is that hard on the mouthpiece what is that considering don&#39;t know what that is like brunette that&#39;s dark is it it so she now wants to know more detail she doesn&#39;t understand bestest African CP so she comes clean on that and says that what&#39;s that I don&#39;t know what that is okay so she wants more clarification on what exactly is West African CIA so it kind of conveys her ignorance okay she&#39;s not familiar with that particular phrase so then this the speaker attempts to simplify the description by comparing the skin color to something which is more familiar to the land lady He suggests that uh like brunette he says it is like brunette uh which is a common term to describe dark brown hair okay dark brown hair so this comparison is used to bridge the cultural gap between the speaker and because they come from very different kind of backgrounds she&#39;s not able to understand what he means so he&#39;s trying to make it simpler by using terms which she would possibly understand so it kind of highlights the difficulty in please remember this use this phrase cross cultural communication okay she says that&#39;s dark isn&#39;t it not all together facially I&#39;m brunette but ma&#39;am you should see the rest of me so she says oh brunette that would be dark okay uh and uh she&#39;s asking wouldn&#39;t that be dark so he says no not not all together face is brunette but the rest of my body is not brunette okay my Palms my soles of my feet they are of a peroxide blonde okay so he&#39;s now giving even more detail even more detail to convince her that only my face is Brunet in color the rest of my body is actually like a peroxide blonde okay brunette is obviously a darker tone but the other ones are lighter which are like peroxide blonde so he&#39;s kind of highlighting the complexity uh and the varying skin tones and that&#39;s what he&#39;s trying to convince her with and uh whereas she has a very simplistic perception your dark light of course now she wants to know whe he&#39;s too dark or too uh not so dark kind of a thing peroxide blonde is usually the color of the hair of a white person okay so he says that that&#39;s the color of the rest of my body friction cost foolishly manam by sitting down has turned my bottom raven black so he says that by sitting down the hum he&#39;s trying to be humorous so he says that my bottom my backside has become a little dark because of the friction of sitting down okay uh so he&#39;s trying to be a little playful at the same time he&#39;s trying to make the land ladies close question sounds so silly and absurd okay and he&#39;s trying to inject humor into the conversation but the lady is not very amused he says then he says uh one more m one moment ma&#39;am sensing her receiver raring on the thunder clap about my ears ma&#39;am I pleaded wouldn&#39;t you rather see for yourself now uh he&#39;s heard the Thunderclap in his ears okay so the speaker sensing the landed his potential reaction to his previous statement uh he says he pleads he&#39;s almost pleading with her that he can visit her in person so that she can see his skin color in person uh and uh rearing on the thunder clap is almost is kind of conveying the potential for ending the conversation completely okay Raven is the reference to some kind of a grow so it&#39;s talking about being extremely uh black so uh so he&#39;s kind of highlighting the limitations of the telephone conversation being able to convey the color of someone&#39;s skin so he says that why don&#39;t you see me directly so that you can judge me better Thunderclap is a loud sound like thunder here it is used in a metaphorical sense to describe the shocking U realization from the other person the landl is kind of shocked U the receiver hearing her receiver rearing on the Thunderclap hearing on the I don&#39;t know why this print out is wrong hearing on the thunder clap so it creates the image of the telephone receiver moving like a raring horse you know a horse it&#39;s almost suggest a very abrupt kind of a movement of the land lady on hearing the further details about uh the rest of his body would you rather see for yourself and he finally shifts the power to the speaker he&#39;s almost like challenging her why don&#39;t you see me he&#39;s challenging the Prejudice of the land lady saying that let&#39;s have a face tof face meeting you know as if he&#39;s wanting to turn the tables on her so the land lady you can sense that she&#39;s feeling frustrated so the poem ends with the speaker challenging the land lady in order to confront her racial Prejudice in person that&#39;s what he&#39;s trying to do at the end of the poem would you wouldn&#39;t you rather see for yourself wouldn&#39;t you prefer to see it for yourself that&#39;s what he&#39;s asking so he&#39;s challenging her racial Prejudice why are so many lines written in capital letters because he wants to convey the emphasis the intensity of the conversation so um whenever you write in capital letters and this is what I have always told my students when you write something in capital letters it means you&#39;re shouting and that&#39;s what is also sought to be conveyed whenever you are raising one&#39;s voice an internet atate never write in capital letters because it means that you are shouting at the other person okay that&#39;s what internet edicate means so um it kind of conveys emotions of frustration okay of anger frustration U some kind of U desperation indignation all that is being conveyed by the capital letter so he wants to convey the tone and the emotion how does he convey it he has used capital letters in order to convey the intensity of of the conversation to the reader and the challenges that he is facing what are the various literary devices alliteration button B button a you know that the repetition of words like dark red that red bus red post box all those kind of things the imagery which I already explained both visual as well as tactile imagy metaphor the red color bus and the other metaphors that I spoke about uh which kind of convey the domination of the white community over people of color the irony that she makes her inquiries very politely but they are only a mask for her Prejudice okay enjam I&#39;ve already spoken about about how it flows from one line to the other okay so I hope uh you uh understood uh this particular poem clearly uh it has provided you with Clarity it&#39;s not a simple poem and if you have taken down the notes it would help you understand the poem clearly and then use all those kind of words and phrases that I&#39;ve used in this explanation which is why I&#39;ve explained in English uh so that you make it easy for yourself when you write those five marks and 10 marks questions and answers okay thank you very much Tata bye-bye God bless you

hello namaskar wam you&amp;#39;re watching study with sudhir and in this video I&amp;#39;m going to be teaching the telephone conversation poem which is part of the ISC Class 12 English literature syllabus this is the first poem in your syllabus for Class 12 now what kind of a poem it is is it it&amp;#39;s a poem that focuses on and exposes racism in modern day Society especially as an offshoot of colonialism okay so let&amp;#39;s get started I have made some notes and it would make it easier for you to do see it and then understand the basic context of the poem and thereafter I will get into the line by line explanation I&amp;#39;ve done a lot of research uh for this poem and I can tell you this video will be the best available anywhere I can assure you of that pretty confident about that so here on the screen you can see the poet his spelling is w l e but when I found out I was told that it is pronounced as W soena okay as in W ye um a very well-known Nigerian poet he is very well acclaimed and this picture I have put basically for you to understand what a telephone booth looks like because you&amp;#39;re all the mobile phone generation so you may not have an idea what a typical phone booth especially in Western countries looks like so it will be usually red in color and use it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s a enclosed space you normally have a door okay and it&amp;#39;s a very tiny kind of a space maybe a 4x4 kind of Dimensions okay so U now what is about the poet is a well-known Nigerian poet playright and essayist he was born in 1934 he was born in 19 34 now these are basic details that just kind of help you understand the context you know where is this poet really coming from in the sense that what is his mental makeup as a result of which he has written on a complex uh theme like this one he was awarded and this is very important he is a Nobel laurate he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in the year 1986 making him the first African laurate his poetry is a powerful reflection of his life and experiences as he explores the themes of Oppression and resistance please try to use all these words in your answers especially the long format 10 marks answers these are important words which will help Elevate the quality of your answers and the society wherever there is a society where a country dominated by whites has colonized a country where there is predominantly um the population ation of people of color that&amp;#39;s where racism essentially takes root so there is a sense of clash of cultures there is a sense of clash of identities now briefly about the poet and of course you should also read uh what is written in your book now many of his poems are deeply personal experiences uh and that&amp;#39;s what makes his poem especially this one very powerful um they are shaped by his time in jail or in Exile in fact he was exiled he to leave Nigeria his Noble acceptance speech very interestingly I found was titled this past must address its present that is what has happened in the past it must address its present as he focused on the criticism of aparte which you know happened in many countries most prominently in South Africa now his writing is powerful as he Blends sharp wit with critique of political Injustice in his homeland he also Blends Western literary form with yaruba mythology prevalent in Nigeria that draws on gods now this is more generic okay not specific to this particular poem now what is it about the poem now these cover the themes so please understand what are we getting in this poem and what is the overall theme that is being spoken about now it satires racism now there are two ways of uh dealing with uh complex uh themes like racism either you take a very serious view or you take a sacal view so he takes a sacal view of racism and he addresses the Discrimination experienced by people of color by Africans in particular now the poem is essentially about a phone call which takes place inside a phone booth of the kind that I showed you in the first photograph between a land lady who is not shown and this particular speaker who is black in color he&amp;#39;s wanting to rent an apartment okay that&amp;#39;s what he wants now till such time that the lady realizes I mean she&amp;#39;s kind of willing to rent the apartment to this particular person but then he tells her that he&amp;#39;s a man of color he&amp;#39;s African okay and then follows a series of questions which kind of expose her extreme racist attitude okay they expose deep racial Prejudice this is an important phrase and the speaker tries to mock her by uh you know trying to highlight what kind of color are you talking about chocolate color dark chocolate light chocolate you know that kind of a thing we will get into all those details and when you do that about the skin of anyone&amp;#39;s color like you know in a very uh we think it&amp;#39;s a joke but it&amp;#39;s not a joke when we make fun of someone&amp;#39;s color according to me it&amp;#39;s it shows your own very sick mindset when you are uh making fun mocking someone&amp;#39;s color someone&amp;#39;s weight someone&amp;#39;s height or lack of height you know various things you do that it does not reflect so much on the person you are mocking it reflects on your own inability to show any kind of sensitivity so the big lesson that all of us need to take from poems like this is how we need to be sensitive human beings no one is perfect if the other person who you are mocking as someone who is dark complexion right it&amp;#39;s quite possible that the person can always turn back and mock you for maybe being plump maybe being sh maybe uh for anything right so there could be 101 reasons maybe having a very long nose right uh or maybe uh not having healthy hair okay or maybe deciding to go Bal like me like people one of the I mean I always find it very amusing I used to get a little irritated earlier you know when people in order to just try to get under my skin would say it tucking please realize and I&amp;#39;ve said this before also please realize there are lots of people in this world who suffer from cancer and when you undergo chemotherapy you lose hair so there are a lot of people in this world who donate hair so that they can be made into wigs for those cancer patients please remember that so everyone can have a backstory please do not mock anyone without knowing that person&amp;#39;s Story please remember that okay let&amp;#39;s get back to the poem The Speaker responds by mocking her Prejudice in order to highlight that you should not characterize people by the color of their skin because you&amp;#39;re dehumanizing them okay now what is about the poem the style of the poem is what I want to talk about humor and irony two important words which you should definitely use in your answers and he uses satile humor with irony in order to expose the absurdity that how absurd how silly it is to have this kind of a narrow thinking that if you are a man of color I may have sec second thoughts about renting the apartment to such a person and that&amp;#39;s what makes this poem a very powerful critique of racism in the modern day world and what are the themes that have been explored the struggle for equality because obviously the speaker wants to be equal wants to be treated as equal not as someone who is inferior just because his color does not match that of the person who is more fair complexion right this I found very interesting and I thought I should highlight this to you because I think this can also come maybe as a five marks question I mean if I were the examiner I would and uh it would make for a very interesting I mean what&amp;#39;s the significance I mean it could have been a face tof face conversation right why is it set inside a telephone boo he could have been talking from let&amp;#39;s say mobile phone while walking on the streets he could have been talking from uh the place where he&amp;#39;s staying earlier why does the poet put it inside a telephone booth H it means of course that he does not own a phone on his own which is why he&amp;#39;s having to do this from a place where he has to pay by the meter now the telephone both more importantly it symbolizes because it&amp;#39;s a very confined space what I showed you in the photograph it symbolizes confinement so it is a small space limited space and the confinement in this case is both physical literally speaking it&amp;#39;s also emotional because the speaker is feeling rather claustrophobic because of the kind of questions the land lady is asking him that&amp;#39;s the speaker&amp;#39;s identity is question and it is very closely scrutinized she&amp;#39;s listening to him very closely the answers that he provides the information that he provides the boot therefore conveys a sense of isolation he&amp;#39;s alone in that world there&amp;#39;s a lot of traffic going around him but he&amp;#39;s alone inside that boot so the the the setting of the poem that way is extremely significant he&amp;#39;s physically separated from the land ready maybe many kilometers we have no idea where that particular house is apartment is so it kind of also it she can&amp;#39;t see him he doesn&amp;#39;t see him but he&amp;#39;s trying to she&amp;#39;s trying to find out what is the nature of the color of your skin so there&amp;#39;s a slightly impersonal nature of their conversation and that is highlighted more by this particular limited space telephone booth okay and they&amp;#39;re also discussing they&amp;#39;re not having a friendly chat they don&amp;#39;t know each other that way right they&amp;#39;re discussing something as formal as a rent agreement right because he wants to rent the apartment so there&amp;#39;s a sense of impersonality and that whole setting inside the telephone booth therefore is extremely apt I hope uh you got the idea of why is it so and being confined also highlights the possibility of reject rection you are alone you are rejected and when you are rejected the world will not know only you will know that you have been rejected and you have been rejected possibly because of the color of the skin I mean that may have happened after the conversation I mean the person may himself not be interested in taking the apartment a phone booth also restricts the speaker&amp;#39;s ability to react physically it&amp;#39;s a very limited space what can he do even if he shouts the world outside possibly cannot hear him so he can only listen to the questions and answer them right he has to suffer the biases that the land lady subjects him to so he cannot control what the land lady will say and the phone booth The Limited space inside the phone booth kind of emphasizes underlines this kind of a feeling that the speaker feels at that point in time the phone finally is also a means of communication but here and please use this kind of lines the phone becomes an instrument through which Prejudice is spread from one person to another the other person at the other end of the line is made to feel small because of the color of the skin which the land lady cannot see is only told about okay I hope I managed to convey to you what exactly is this poem all about and that would make it easy for you now to understand what we are going to discuss okay now let&amp;#39;s get line by line explanation the first five lines the price please keep a book with you just makes it easier and you keep your notebook so that you can take down the notes now the price seemed reasonable location indifferent the land lady swore she lived off premises nothing remained but self-confession ma&amp;#39;am I want I hate a wasted Journey I&amp;#39;m African now a lot of information in the first five lines of this poem now the meaning of the word reasonable reasonable means something which is fair you know the the rent seemed reasonable you know okay TI there was I mean she was not quoting a very Hefty rent per month so it seemed reasonable something which I could afford to pay at the end of the month indifferent means there was she wasn&amp;#39;t really interested in him she was interested in renting the apartment renting out the apartment she couldn&amp;#39;t care less who this person is at least that&amp;#39;s what the tone initially conveyed because she obviously thought that she was talking to a fair complexion a white person right uh off premises uh off premises means that she herself did not live in the same building where the apartment was located so which is good so these three reasons he writing as good from his point of view that land lady was not there there no kitkit kind of thing on a regular daily basis key why is the tap open why are the lights on uh why have you left the door open you know those kind of things which a landlord or a land lady can create trouble for the uh tenant on a daily basis since she did not live in the same building it was better she did not seem very bothered about you know his background right and the most importantly the price also seemed reasonable uh but at that point in time he said now there was the it was the time to make a self confession self-confession is admission of fact that is he&amp;#39;s trying to admit something he&amp;#39;s trying to admit something now let me explain this further now we have seen that the poet starts the poem starts with the details of the apartment okay the location was also so fine uh you know the uh the location was fine the price was reasonable the landl SW that she did not live on the uh building you know uh everything seemed kind of okay at this point in time the land lady assured him that she did not live in the same building so he needed now to confess his identity so he told the land lady that he was African okay now the reason he gave was that he did not want to make the journey and then for her to see him when he comes with all his luggage and then real AR you are African I have a problem with that right so it&amp;#39;s quite possible he has had these kind of rejections before which is why despite the location being okay despite the rent being uh reasonable despite the land lady not living on the premises he wanted to make this kind of a disclosure Ure of his identity of his color okay so while the first three lines suggest that there is nothing wrong there are no red flags at all in the first three lines red flags there&amp;#39;s nothing wrong there but the moment you hear the word he wants to make a self-c confession your antenna as the reader should go up that something is wrong because the African identity seems to be a problem area and his problem probably aware of the potential of discrimination on the basis of color maybe because of past experiences okay maybe in the past he has had such negative experiences now it&amp;#39;s kind of a little uh strange that he uses the word self-confession because when you kind of talking to someone for the first time what&amp;#39;s the word you use let let me introduce myself you don&amp;#39;t say let me confess with someone you are talking to for the first time right so uh that itself makes you feel that he&amp;#39;s aware or he&amp;#39;s having this thing somewhere at the back of his mind that being an African will be seen as a negative and therefore he needs to disclose that openly uh so you know in the whole dynamic between the land lady and the speaker it puts him at a slightly weaker position understood now uh he it also kind of conveys that he knows that the land lady must be warned about maybe because of past experience that he has faced that it is something which he must warn the land lady about that he&amp;#39;s a man of color okay and uh you know I don&amp;#39;t think he feels ashamed of being African but he knows how the other person is likely to perceive that okay so he&amp;#39;s been practical maybe a bit cheeky that you know I hated I hate a wasted Journey so he&amp;#39;s being very practical I don&amp;#39;t like to you know I don&amp;#39;t want to come let&amp;#39;s say 10 miles or 20 miles and come there and you to see me and say oh you&amp;#39;re African no no no we don&amp;#39;t give it to Africans right in many places in India also there is discrimination which is done which I will not not get into but you know this is another form of discrimination and in fact that&amp;#39;s something which you should be aware of because these days those kind of questions are also sometimes asked in the examination um his self-confession is perhaps based on his previous encounters and maybe he has struggled to find an apartment uh rent an apartment in the past uh so the first five lines why are they important because they have a very conversational kind of a tone uh and that&amp;#39;s what telephone con ation telephone conversations are usually not very formal conversations there&amp;#39;s this there&amp;#39;s an element of casualness about a telephone conversation and if you see the lines flow into each other the use of the literary device of enam vent okay where the lines kind of flow the sentence or phrase from one line of poetry continues to the next without a full stop or U any other form of punctuation to signify the end of a line so it is to kind of give you a certain flow and that&amp;#39;s how telephone conversations usually are obviously you&amp;#39;re not going to say I will speak this line full stop I will speak this line comma then it will continue no it doesn&amp;#39;t work that way so it gives you a sense of momentum okay um also if you when a phone boot you have a meter running you may not be aware there&amp;#39;s a meter running per second you are kind of uh uh you have to pay the money right so now after the first five lines you also this thing oh I&amp;#39;m African now immediately you realize that this particular disclosure of his identity is going to be a turning point it&amp;#39;s also going to be an important detail and it establish the theme of the poem you realize that this is not just any other ordinary telephone conversation I hope the first five lines are I&amp;#39;m explaining in detail because so that you don&amp;#39;t have any doubt you know I&amp;#39;m trying to explain it in so much of detail so that everything is crystal clear to you okay now lines 6 to9 there is silence at the other end the moment he says I&amp;#39;m African there is silence at the other end silenced transmission of pressurized good breeding now transmission is a word that you usually read in physics H now U it is used to convey the passage of electrical signals um to an instrument which could be let&amp;#39;s say a television it could be a laptop it could be a desktop you know those kind of things good breeding uh conveys upbringing which which means that she has had good education she has good manners good etiquette so that&amp;#39;s what good breeding conveys voice when it came lipstick coated long gold rolled cigarette holder piped pipped caught I was fly now cigarette holder if you know uh in the past U especially women who smoked they would hold it put the cigarette inside a holder okay they would not kind so that the lips did not touch the the butt of the cigarette they would do it and it was considered a fashion upmarket kind of an accessory if you have seen any of the old time Western movies English movies European movies in particular you would have seen that it&amp;#39;s a thin tube in which the cigarette is held while smoking pipped means a short high pitched sound this is referring to the this is an imagery of sound it&amp;#39;s a sharp high pitch sound caught I was fly fly means in a rude manner in an unpleasant manner now the word silence it&amp;#39;s follows I am African in the Fifth Line it conveys the impact after he has disclosed his African identity and the poet further explains the reaction of the land lady by describing the silence further he&amp;#39;s not just saying silence he&amp;#39;s then going on to describe and giving details about The Silence by saying it was silenced transmission of pressurized good breeding right we suggest that she was what does it suggest that she was trying to maintain a facade an exterior of good manners she was not immediately saying she&amp;#39;s not saying that okay she&amp;#39;s not reacting like that she&amp;#39;s keeping silent that conveys good manners but he can make out from the tension of that silence on the telephone line she&amp;#39;s not too happy about it she&amp;#39;s a little taken a back by that particular detail so so she&amp;#39;s trying to maintain a facade of politeness but her good manners are preventing her from immediately reacting in a negative Manner and the use of the word pressurized but the use of the word pressurized it kind of exposes it because it tells us that it is forced pressure means you are forcing it so she&amp;#39;s forcing herself to not react immediately so she&amp;#39;s reacting with silence which conveys to the other person what she is thinking but she&amp;#39;s not expressing it in a negative manner I hope you are understanding it so it is the the the word pressurized conve that it is forced it is artificial it&amp;#39;s a facade okay facade spelling great now when the land lady finally speaks speaks the poet uses the poetic imagery to describe what she may have uh looked like right lipstick he&amp;#39;s almost imagining her this is how she must be looking he&amp;#39;s kind of creating she may not look like that but he&amp;#39;s imagining what she would have been like okay at the other end of the telephone line lipstick coated you know with a thick shade of lipstick with that cigarette holder which would be gold which again conveys wealth okay up Market sophistication high society and it also creates an immediate contrast with um the African tenant because you know cigarette holder P you know U lipstick quoted it conveys a slight sense of hotess okay U hotty attitude and it conveys a contrast with the African tenant who is kind of you know more happy about rent location okay land lady doesn&amp;#39;t stay in the building he&amp;#39;s more bothered about very day-to-day kind of things you know very matter of fact kind of things whereas he&amp;#39;s of a slightly upm Market society and the voice kind of convey um conveys some sense of sophistication now CAU I was fly here he&amp;#39;s talking about himself uh um he feels as though he has been exposed in a slightly unfair manner because of the disclosure that he has made and the reaction to that disclosure right um and also if you see the first line the first line he said reasonable so at that time he seemed to be happy about what he was getting into but now he feels CAU ey was fly because he feels that now he&amp;#39;s her silence is judging her on the basis of his color of his skin so it makes him feel a little vulnerable it makes him feel a little vulnerable that you know his position has become weak VAV that of the land lady even though the land lady has not said anything because of her silence itself she&amp;#39;s making him feel vulnerable okay so you know this sentence caught I was fly it becomes a very powerful critique and it kind of it&amp;#39;s an indictment of racism please use these kind of phrases I use that in the opening notes also you can take those screenshots it&amp;#39;s an indictment of racism it you know it shows that people can be made to feel small even when you don&amp;#39;t speak a word even with silence you can actually do that I hope line n it&amp;#39;s clear said it in so many words are you light or are you very dark that&amp;#39;s what she asked him right so he wants he repeats a question to convey his sense of disbelief that she in modern society could actually ask a question like that right um so you realize and the and the speaker also realizes that everything for the land lady boils down to the color of his of the prospective tenant&amp;#39;s skin so it shows a very insensitive way of looking at a person now the next few lines convey he&amp;#39;s thinking how do I react to this question are you light or are you very dark how does one react to something like that right that&amp;#39;s what he&amp;#39;s thinking about even though earlier it seemed as if you know he was used to that but he&amp;#39;s obviously not happy about this kind of a query where she wants to know the exact shade of his color so uh button B button a what does this mean now in the phone boo there are this buttons it could be literal thing but button B and button a and this is what my research shows uh it could be a reference one of course that that he&amp;#39;s at a public Booth but metaphorically speaking that&amp;#39;s a literal meaning metaphorically speaking button B could signify the color of the speaker skin B could mean black button black uh so the landl is inquiring whether he is dark or very light button a could be the other end of the spectrum that&amp;#39;s why she&amp;#39;s he&amp;#39;s using T first you know black button a now a could be reference to white or let&amp;#39;s say Anglo Saxon okay so that could be button a uh so uh that&amp;#39;s what she wants to know and then he says stench of rancid breath of public hide and speak hide and seek but here since he is talking about a telephone conversation he kind of uses that to say hide and speak so button B and button a are conveying racial discrimination it&amp;#39;s almost like categorization are you in button b or are you in button a you&amp;#39;re trying to say line line you know you&amp;#39;re trying to discriminate okay where you are kind of judged differently based on the color of your skin U and it also kind of conveys the absurdity you know you are reducing it to a button so stench means bad smell okay I hope you know that you know uh stench means bad smell smell rancid means something which has got spoiled so it conveys the unpleasantness of the place so rancid breath means that the air of the place the air around in that place is filled with the unpleasant smell of people&amp;#39;s breath that conveys that he&amp;#39;s in a very crowded public space he&amp;#39;s inside the phone booth but there are a lot of people there and the smell out there does not seem to be fresh it seems to be rather unpleasant then hide and speak as I said it&amp;#39;s a play on the phrase hide and seek it suggests that the conversation is something to be concealed hide what you speak hide what you speak because of the racial discrimination he is uh experiencing okay because of the racial discrimination he&amp;#39;s experiencing now the word red is about the color around him the red red is the color theme of that entire setting and the red is the dominant color which is why you see it being repeated several times the telephone booth is red in color right the red pillar box is most likely a post box letter boxes are also red in color right red double tired om i buus squelching tar this is refering to a double decker bus the double decker bus okay double decker bus and it is moving on the road squelching tar tar is the reference to the um Road it&amp;#39;s squelching is the sound imagery which he is talking about also the touch as a result of the touch the bus on the tar which obviously refers that it is a very hot day and the tar is soft so when the bus is moving on the tar it is making some kind of a squelching sound okay so it&amp;#39;s also the sense of sound it&amp;#39;s also the sense of touch between the friction between the bus tires and the tar of the road it was real so he&amp;#39;s saying this is what was happening shamed by ill-mannered silence surrender pushed dumpfounded to beg simplification consider she was wearing the emphasis the red double decker bus on the tar tar is what in color tar is black in color right tar is black in color so the red is dominating so it also conveys the domination of the white people over the people of color so that&amp;#39;s what this is an important metaphor Red Double tired Omnibus quing tar so it is at one one level a literal meaning of what he&amp;#39;s seeing right in front of him while he&amp;#39;s inside the telephone booth the metaphorical meaning is what I had conveyed there is use of imagery there is also the metaphorical meaning that it is conveying the domination of the white people over the people of color it was real means you know he&amp;#39;s kind of trying to tell you and me that this is real it is actually happening I&amp;#39;m actually hearing something like this in my ear on the telephone line so the question which has been asked to him may seem extremely silly and absurd but the speaker is trying to tell you reaffirm to you that he&amp;#39;s not imagining it it&amp;#39;s actually being said I&amp;#39;m shocked that something like this could actually be said you know you say sometime no I&amp;#39;m shocked you asked me such a question that&amp;#39;s what he&amp;#39;s trying to convey so it&amp;#39;s rich in imagery and detail Visual and sound the red color everything the imagery the sound and the feeling of t shamed by ill-mannered silence now the speaker feels a sense of Shame Shame by ill-mannered silence okay uh the shame is it&amp;#39;s coming because of the lady&amp;#39;s sense of racism because she&amp;#39;s extremely racist in her attitude and because of the tone in which she asked the question are you light or are you very dark um initially he had felt a little shamed by her silence and then she asked this kind of a question so he&amp;#39;s feeling a very power powerless at this point in time he&amp;#39;s feeling very defeated by the situation as it is developing so he wants to engage in a conversation but her whole attitude seems to make him feel extremely small and vulnerable surrender pushed this is an important line and a complicated line surrender pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification the speaker is so taken aback by her initial silence that he&amp;#39;s rendered speechless by her silence followed by that question that he&amp;#39;s rendered speechless dumpfounded means speechless you know he&amp;#39;s not able to say anything okay so he then feels compelled to ask for a clarification beg simplification means he wants her to ask the question in a simple kind of a manner he wants to know you know what is it that she really want even though she has asked it pretty straight but he wants it to be further simplified so he&amp;#39;s taken by her question but she wants it to be simplified considerate she was wearing the emphasis so he says considerate and this is extremely sarcastic he&amp;#39;s saying that oh she was concentrate why because she ask the question rephrase the question so he says uh that she became considerate she began to vary her emphasis uh while kind of clarifying that so this is extremely sarcastic so her supposed consideration is in rephrasing her question from how dark to are you light or very dark so wearing the emphasis highlights the superficiality of her attitude the superficiality of her consideration and if you see what he has done is to leave a dash at the end it means that he&amp;#39;s leaving the sentence incomplete and it implies that the speaker does not believe that she&amp;#39;s really being very sens uh sensitive or concentrate and there&amp;#39;s a sense of anger are you dark or very light Revelation came you mean like plain or milk chocolate her accent was clinical crushing in its light impersonality now the land lady now ask a very direct thing are you dark that&amp;#39;s what he said she&amp;#39;s asked are you dark or very light because that&amp;#39;s what he says are you light or very dark are you dark or very light she has kind of changed it okay so uh the speaker uses a metaphor maybe a bit sarcastically to describe skin color to various shades of chocolate he&amp;#39;s almost being very flippant he&amp;#39;s almost you know he&amp;#39;s trying to make it more absurd and silly than her initial question itself so this metaphorical comparison that he&amp;#39;s making to different shades of chocolate highlights the what does it highlight it highlights the absurdity of a question because he thinks in today&amp;#39;s society you should not be even asking something like that the other important thing that he highlights is the dehumanizing effect of reducing individuals on the basis of their color making them feel small because of the color of their skin so by equating skin color to different shades of chocolate he&amp;#39;s kind of making it absurd he&amp;#39;s highlighting the absurdity the superficiality the ignorance of the land lady that she&amp;#39;s asking a question like that so he&amp;#39;s trying to be a little humorous so her accent uh I&amp;#39;m not sure whether it it is accent or asent I we need to check I personally feel it is asent not accent okay her asent means to say yes sir asent was clinical crushing in its light impersonality uh that her response is very clinical she&amp;#39;s not understanding the humor or the sarcasm in his line so she&amp;#39;s being very clinical so she&amp;#39;s having a very unemotional and a very detached kind of a response to what he has asked chocolate Okay so she you realized that she does not want to engage in any kind of you know understanding the tenant better she&amp;#39;s having a very unemotional and a very detached kind of a conversation it&amp;#39;s very transactional that&amp;#39;s all nothing beyond that there&amp;#39;s no other kind of relationship that she wants to get into and there&amp;#39;s a lack of empathy there is lack of sensitivity towards the speaker the phrase crushing in its light impersonality it points to the impact of the landlady&amp;#39;s response on the speaker okay even though the speaker tries to inject some kind of humor some kind of wit some kind of sarcasm in the way he responds using the metaphor of the chocolate the land lady&amp;#39;s very clinical response completely disregards what the speaker is trying to do uh and this kind of further underlines the very dehumanizing effect of what she seeks to no line 21 to 26 rapidly wavelength adjusted I chose so he kind of adjusted and he kind of wavelength means a particular Chain of Thought wavelength uh not necessarily in the way we understand in physics it&amp;#39;s a Chain of Thought you know immediately as she kind of reacted he kind of adjusted Ed what he had to think and he uh chose West African cpia now cpia is a reddish brown color this is the dictionary meaning cpia is a reddish brown color associated with monocrome photographs of the 19th and the early 20th centuries earlier black and white color that was known as the CPI it was more of a monochrome more close to black and white uh than to color so he said I am West African cpia okay uh and then he added you know one more line you know thought about it and added down in my passport that is that&amp;#39;s the way I look in my passport uh and then when he receives a very disinterested reaction from the land lady uh that&amp;#39;s when he decides that you know that&amp;#39;s what I will react like you know West African sepia down in my passport so it kind of West African seia it kind of conveys some kind of pride in his African uh race and Heritage it also kind of takes points to his pride in his own culture U it is some kind of an assertion of his African identity best African identity so he&amp;#39;s feeling very proud of of it okay so in the face so he&amp;#39;s fighting that blatant racial discrimination by emphasizing his African identity okay this is again an important so this is how he&amp;#39;s kind of in a very subtle manner he&amp;#39;s standing up to that lady by saying West African cpia um so uh down in my passport reveals that probably it&amp;#39;s quite possible that he may have faced these kind of encounters before also you know there could have been uh what we generally refer to as racial profiling what happens is that I&amp;#39;ll just explain especially this happens in Western countries police they go and go to a particular neighborhood and say that okay 80% of the people here are of this particular color or this particular Community right so you kind of racially profile like in we call it communally profile right so you profile a particular area neighborhood locality saying that okay this has this particular Community or race in a larger proportion as compared to the others right so it&amp;#39;s quite possible that he has had that kind of an experience of discrimination racial discrimination while he was traveling which is why he refers to his passport because that&amp;#39;s official document spectroscopy you know silence for spectroscopic flight of fancy now spectroscopy I&amp;#39;m sure all of you students of physics as well also know that it involves splitting of light you would have read this in class 10 now it means the dispersion of thoughts of the lady after realizing that the speaker is a black person he realizes that you know the moment that realization has dawned on her that the person she&amp;#39;s speaking to is African so that is kind of you know those thoughts are splitting in her head at that point in time so he uses this very term of physics silence for spectroscopic flight of fancy till truthfulness changed her accent uh hard on the mouthpiece the land lady&amp;#39;s response to the speaker description of their skin color is initially one of Silence indicating her confusion or familiarity with the term West African cpia so she takes some time to process that and then Rea okay uh the spectroscopic flight of fancy what is this flight of fancy that we are talking about it kind of suggests the ladies attempt to understand what he actually means by West African cpia okay uh and she&amp;#39;s trying to understand that which is why that momentary silence flight of fancy could also mean an unrealistic idea which I mean he&amp;#39;s using it in a very mocking manner you know he&amp;#39;s trying to mock her by saying she must be having some flight of fancy you know some fanciful idea that she would Express after that however the land lady then responds still truthfulness changed her accent so she says what is that hard on the mouthpiece what is that considering don&amp;#39;t know what that is like brunette that&amp;#39;s dark is it it so she now wants to know more detail she doesn&amp;#39;t understand bestest African CP so she comes clean on that and says that what&amp;#39;s that I don&amp;#39;t know what that is okay so she wants more clarification on what exactly is West African CIA so it kind of conveys her ignorance okay she&amp;#39;s not familiar with that particular phrase so then this the speaker attempts to simplify the description by comparing the skin color to something which is more familiar to the land lady He suggests that uh like brunette he says it is like brunette uh which is a common term to describe dark brown hair okay dark brown hair so this comparison is used to bridge the cultural gap between the speaker and because they come from very different kind of backgrounds she&amp;#39;s not able to understand what he means so he&amp;#39;s trying to make it simpler by using terms which she would possibly understand so it kind of highlights the difficulty in please remember this use this phrase cross cultural communication okay she says that&amp;#39;s dark isn&amp;#39;t it not all together facially I&amp;#39;m brunette but ma&amp;#39;am you should see the rest of me so she says oh brunette that would be dark okay uh and uh she&amp;#39;s asking wouldn&amp;#39;t that be dark so he says no not not all together face is brunette but the rest of my body is not brunette okay my Palms my soles of my feet they are of a peroxide blonde okay so he&amp;#39;s now giving even more detail even more detail to convince her that only my face is Brunet in color the rest of my body is actually like a peroxide blonde okay brunette is obviously a darker tone but the other ones are lighter which are like peroxide blonde so he&amp;#39;s kind of highlighting the complexity uh and the varying skin tones and that&amp;#39;s what he&amp;#39;s trying to convince her with and uh whereas she has a very simplistic perception your dark light of course now she wants to know whe he&amp;#39;s too dark or too uh not so dark kind of a thing peroxide blonde is usually the color of the hair of a white person okay so he says that that&amp;#39;s the color of the rest of my body friction cost foolishly manam by sitting down has turned my bottom raven black so he says that by sitting down the hum he&amp;#39;s trying to be humorous so he says that my bottom my backside has become a little dark because of the friction of sitting down okay uh so he&amp;#39;s trying to be a little playful at the same time he&amp;#39;s trying to make the land ladies close question sounds so silly and absurd okay and he&amp;#39;s trying to inject humor into the conversation but the lady is not very amused he says then he says uh one more m one moment ma&amp;#39;am sensing her receiver raring on the thunder clap about my ears ma&amp;#39;am I pleaded wouldn&amp;#39;t you rather see for yourself now uh he&amp;#39;s heard the Thunderclap in his ears okay so the speaker sensing the landed his potential reaction to his previous statement uh he says he pleads he&amp;#39;s almost pleading with her that he can visit her in person so that she can see his skin color in person uh and uh rearing on the thunder clap is almost is kind of conveying the potential for ending the conversation completely okay Raven is the reference to some kind of a grow so it&amp;#39;s talking about being extremely uh black so uh so he&amp;#39;s kind of highlighting the limitations of the telephone conversation being able to convey the color of someone&amp;#39;s skin so he says that why don&amp;#39;t you see me directly so that you can judge me better Thunderclap is a loud sound like thunder here it is used in a metaphorical sense to describe the shocking U realization from the other person the landl is kind of shocked U the receiver hearing her receiver rearing on the Thunderclap hearing on the I don&amp;#39;t know why this print out is wrong hearing on the thunder clap so it creates the image of the telephone receiver moving like a raring horse you know a horse it&amp;#39;s almost suggest a very abrupt kind of a movement of the land lady on hearing the further details about uh the rest of his body would you rather see for yourself and he finally shifts the power to the speaker he&amp;#39;s almost like challenging her why don&amp;#39;t you see me he&amp;#39;s challenging the Prejudice of the land lady saying that let&amp;#39;s have a face tof face meeting you know as if he&amp;#39;s wanting to turn the tables on her so the land lady you can sense that she&amp;#39;s feeling frustrated so the poem ends with the speaker challenging the land lady in order to confront her racial Prejudice in person that&amp;#39;s what he&amp;#39;s trying to do at the end of the poem would you wouldn&amp;#39;t you rather see for yourself wouldn&amp;#39;t you prefer to see it for yourself that&amp;#39;s what he&amp;#39;s asking so he&amp;#39;s challenging her racial Prejudice why are so many lines written in capital letters because he wants to convey the emphasis the intensity of the conversation so um whenever you write in capital letters and this is what I have always told my students when you write something in capital letters it means you&amp;#39;re shouting and that&amp;#39;s what is also sought to be conveyed whenever you are raising one&amp;#39;s voice an internet atate never write in capital letters because it means that you are shouting at the other person okay that&amp;#39;s what internet edicate means so um it kind of conveys emotions of frustration okay of anger frustration U some kind of U desperation indignation all that is being conveyed by the capital letter so he wants to convey the tone and the emotion how does he convey it he has used capital letters in order to convey the intensity of of the conversation to the reader and the challenges that he is facing what are the various literary devices alliteration button B button a you know that the repetition of words like dark red that red bus red post box all those kind of things the imagery which I already explained both visual as well as tactile imagy metaphor the red color bus and the other metaphors that I spoke about uh which kind of convey the domination of the white community over people of color the irony that she makes her inquiries very politely but they are only a mask for her Prejudice okay enjam I&amp;#39;ve already spoken about about how it flows from one line to the other okay so I hope uh you uh understood uh this particular poem clearly uh it has provided you with Clarity it&amp;#39;s not a simple poem and if you have taken down the notes it would help you understand the poem clearly and then use all those kind of words and phrases that I&amp;#39;ve used in this explanation which is why I&amp;#39;ve explained in English uh so that you make it easy for yourself when you write those five marks and 10 marks questions and answers okay thank you very much Tata bye-bye God bless you

Transcript for:Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka - Lecture Notes

Transcript for:
Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka - Lecture Notes