II.6. Mood and Tone
In P'Bitek's poems, the narrator presents and reveals intense
feelings and anxiety. The Songs and dances are full of emotions:
You dance naughtily with pride/ You dance with spirit, / You
compete, you insult, you provoke (SOL, P.42). They evoke sexual emotions
without touching: Her breasts are ripe like the full moon...The eyes of her
love fall one her breasts/Do you think the young man sleeps? (SOL, P.44). The
poet through Lawino expresses anger and pity towards African woman:
«Anger welled up inside me
Burning my chest like bile» (SOL, P.79).
«In Buganda
They buy you
With two pots.
They purchase you/On hire purchase oven like bicycles,/ You
are furniture,/Mathress for man/ Apillon/For his head Woman of African»
(SOO, 134).
From the beginning of the poen, the tone is sharpened. Lawino
addresses her husband directly in the second person and at the same time speaks
in manner which reduces him to the level of a fool. In chapter 12, Lawono
lampoons Ocol by telling him directky how stupid he is to ape and be
subservient to white people. Lawino plaeds with her husband, but in a manner
that ridicules hipm:
«Listen, my husband... Before your own wife and
children?» ( SOL, PP.115-116). In the last section, section 13, her whole
approach, manner and tone of voice change, she tones down the bitterness in her
voice and instead of lampooning Ocol she coaxes him like a loving wife. The
poet generally uses satirical monologues in his poems.
II.7. Themes
Before pointing out the developed themes in P' Bitek's poems,
we find it better to define the concept «theme».
According to Intermediate Dictionary, «theme» is a
short written composition .From our point of view, theme can be defined as a
piece composition that shows what an author says about his subject. In
technical, terms, theme is a positive declaration about life.
As far as the theme is concerned, Okot has developed many
themes in his poems. His favorite themes are:
Ø Western scholarship:
The negative effects of neo-colonial education:
For all our young men
Were finished in the forest
«Their man hood was finished
In the class-rooms,
Their testicles
Were smashed
With large books» (SOL, P.117).
Here Ocol is mentally colonized onely western values are the
best. In the class room, Ocol has read extensively and deeply. And in the
reading, the white man says only thing Ocol can find worth is that wich finds
its origin in Europe. Lawino is mocking all those Ocols who are carring the
habit of slavish imitation of white men. They learnt in the Mission School in
to evry sphere of there lives in the new nations of Africa.His master teachs
him that modern values are more worthy than the traditional values. So,
Lawino's biting comments constantly extending the arena of polemical debate
away from her husband and towards a general critic of traditional-modern
confrontationin African. Furthermore the personal experience is widened into a
critic of a whole generation. Larger questions regarding the concept of mahood,
the significance of book-learning, are brought into play as part of the poem's
polemical trust.
Lwino Criticism proceeds from an after matry stance that
traditional values (compared with the modern) as being meaning fully coherent
values should retain their place in contemporary Africa.
Ø African Religion: The negative attitudes of African
chritians:
«I ran out of the church,
I was very sick!
O! Protestants eat people!
They are all wizards,
They exhume corpses
For dinner!
I once joined
The Catholic evening speaker's class
But I did not stay long
I ran away,
I ran away from shouting
Meaning lessly in the evenings
Like parrots
Like the crow birds» (SOL, P.75).
Here the sermons are preached by padres in Latin which
Christians can hardly understand. The Bible is considered by the priest only.
His utterance is considered as a shaut by the members of the church. They are
singing things wich they do not understand. They repeat after the priest things
that they do not understand. The Christians diviner-priests and the white nuns
think the girls understand while no body understands. Christians are annoyed by
saying Maria the clean woman. Mather of the hunch bach pray for us, who spoil
things ful of graciya. From my point of view, they are speaking a strange
langage. They do not understand whot they shout and the teacher controls them
onely by his anger. Ocol is like a parrot, boasting in the masket place and
conemning everything that the white priests told him to condem, instead of
picking out the good from both African and European ways.
Okot P'Bitek's poetry concerns with social and political
themes as freedom:
The fighting for freedom:
«He says
They are fighting for Uhuru
He says
They want Independence and peace
And when they meet
They shout «Uhuru! Uhuru!»
But what is the meaning of Uhuru?
He says
They want to write the Acoli and Lango
And the radi and Lugbara shoud
Live together in peace!» (SOL, P.103).
Ocol says in his speeches that he is fighting for national
unity, but his political energies do not really be a means for bringing about
unity, national or local.
While fighting for peace and against poverty, the political
parties of his post uhuru period should not split the nation (Uganda) into
hostile groups. However, they should join hands.
As justice: The mistreatment of the lower class by the
political elite.
Political power is the only means by which political elite can
aquire wealth:
«The stomach seems to be
A powerful force
For joining Polical parties, especially when the purse
In the trouser pocket
Carries only the coinst
With holes in their middle» (SOL, P.108).
Comments
As morality: The negative effect of sexual morality:
Her breasts are ripe like the full moon... The eyes of her
love fall on her breasts, do you thing the young man sleeps? (SOL, P.44)
«Women throw their arms
Around the necks of their partners
...Ren hold the waists of the women
Tightly, tightly
And as they dance
Knees touch knees (SOL,P.44).
Comments
List of abbreviations
C: Conflict, Confrontation
P: Page
SOL: Song of Lawino
SOO: Song of Ocol.
Conclusion
All said and done, however, we can justifiably say that Okot
p'Bitek's achiwement in Song of Lawino is unparalleled in African
poetry to date using traditial modes of expression and tropes he created a
powerful and memorable poem in the medium of English. His archievement becomes
more significant if we take into account the fact that he communicates even
more effectively in the Acoli language, the language of the peasant community
that gave him the inspiration to champion the cause of African culture. In this
poem, Okot successfully resolved the problem of the contradiction between the
writer's medium and his audience. He cannot be accused of elitism because he
speaks directly to the Acoli masses in their own language and is at the same
time atle to communicate with all those who understand English the world
over.
Okot p'Bitek's art is an example of that rare phenomenon:
popular art which appeals to the highly educated while being intelligible to
the common man and woman in the street.
Furthermore, in his Song of Lawino, Okot foregrounds
a black female speaker whose pride in the traditional Acoli ways of life
inspires her to criticise a husband who has become a product of colonial
attitudes. This post colonial text advocates pre-colonial society through the
voice of Lawino, who takes pride in her black identity. Okot `p Bitek himself
shows his own attitudes towards black feminine difference in Song of Lawino.
Through the analysis of the poems, we have explored some of
the strategies and images employed by Ugandan poet Okot in his attack on
colonization and apply a number of ideas on the female self to a postcolonial
text. Cultural, racial difference and essence contribute to an appreciation of
woman and Acoli culture in Okot's companion poems.
Notice that Lawino `s traditional Acoli sense of time, her
references to non-verbal forms of expression such as notive dance are
constructed with western forms in an attempt to liberate the colonized A frican
from the grip of the colonizer. Okot based the Song of Lawino on an Acoli folk
Song and originally wrote this piece in Acoli before translating it into
English.
This history of conception of Lawino's poem together with the
choice of the subject matter enabled Okot p'Bitek to engage in sustained critic
of Colonization.
Wich is not achieved as convincingly in the
accompanying Song of poem that lacks an acoli version.
Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol are satiritical poems
of post-colonial period. Song of Lawino is a debate about moral norms
and shared assumptions between satirist and audience. It is satirical comment
on the neo-colonial mentality of the African petty bourgeoisie, the
intellectuals and political leaders of Africa.
To enable Lawino to advance her argument forcefully, Okot
gives her the gift of wit and employs Acoli poetic forms to produce a pungent
work of satire.
Although gender is an important factor in these poems, the
racial and pre-colonial /colonial tensions seem to establish an essentialist
position towards male/ female worlds of experience. Through the voice of the
black female subject in Song of Lawino, Okot p'Bitek
may conveya resistance to the trappings of colonialism, but he fails to
liberate his characters from the strict binary opposition of male and female
gender categories.
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