In what different ways have authors chosen to present social issues close to their heart and how does this form and structure help us understand the issue?
Racism is a social issue that has taken place many years ago and it has passed through several stages. Racism as a phenomenon has developed through conflicting and different beliefs. Therefore, at the presentday racism is seen as one of the most common and prominent social issues and is understandably close to the hearts of many authors and poets. The two authors Wole Soyinka and Harper Lee have both used their different text types to make a comment on this issue. Harper Lee in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird has commented on racism with the use of symbolism and narrative structure within the book. On the other hand, Wole Soyinka in his poetic satire Telephone Conversation has used a variety of techniques such as, repetition, capitalization and tone of the poem in order to comment on social issue of racism against minority groups.
In To Kill A Mockingbird , the author Harper Lee is using a lot of different techniques to present the social issue of racism against minority groups close to her heart. One of the techniques she has used is symbolism. The mockingbird is the most prominent symbol in the novel. This repeated image and its main symbol of an innocent creature make it a strong motif within the novel. A mockingbird is a type of bird that is very small and has an ability to mimic or imitate the songs and sounds of other birds. Moreover there are many different species of the mockingbird, some of them are in danger, and it is believed that their traits differ according to the adaptation to specific environments. The first meaning of the mockingbird appears in the beginning of the novel, when Atticus is telling his children how to use shotguns, Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hitem, but remember its a sin to kill a mockingbird. Scout, Atticuss daughter, was surprised to hear that Atticus calls anything a sin , especially a mockingbird. Throughout the novel we find out that mockingbirds are not harmful or destructive, they only sing beautiful songs to people. Moreover we find out, that Tom Robinson, a black man, is seen as a mockingbird in the novel. He was innocent nevertheless people associated him with the crime of rape. He was a victim of racial prejudice; therefore he was killed as a result of it. Furthermore, Atticus could be seen as a mockingbird too, he sang the song of justice about Tom to the people of Maycomb but they did not hear him. Through this technique Lee shows us that people in her novel are reduced to the level of creatures, not humans, but on the other hand she shows us that mockingbirds are representations of innocence as a part of humans life experience.
In contrast to To Kill a Mockingbird, Telephone conversation by Wole Soyinka has various techniques to convey a problem of racial discrimination of minority groups. These techniques include repetition, tone and capitalization. In his poem, he uses repetition to present the social issue of racism within minority groups, close to his heart. The first repetition occurs in the line 6, where author is repeating word silence, Silence. Silenced transmission of/Pressurized good-breeding. In this sentence, silence represents a prejudice against the African-American, who wants to apply for an apartment one of the first ways people indicate their prejudices is through silence. Moreover the repetition of a word silence, show the actual moment of silence after the moment when the man says that he is African which represents the tension by the mans announcement that he is not white. Throughout the poem, there is another repetition in line 11. The word button is repeated two times, Button B. Button A This line shows us that the African-American man is trying to make a choice: to hang up the telephone or continue talking to the white lady either way he knows he is doomed. He does not know how to respond to the question the white landlady asks him. Finally, the most prominent and rude repetition is when landlady asks him, ARE YOU LIGHT/ OR VERY DARK? and ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?. Throughout the lines, we clearly see another technique such as a capitalization of letters. Wole Soyinka uses capitalization in landladies sentences, to show the high importance of information that she connects to her questions. Obviously, the landlady would rent him land, if the speaker would not be too dark in color, meaning again a racial discrimination based on racial prejudice.
In addition to the symbolism that Harper Lee uses in her novel, she also makes a point on a narrative structure of To Kill A Mockingbird. The story of the novel goes along with the life of Finch family, of Maycomb city, who try to help African-American to win a trial due to his innocence. Our story narrator is Scout Finch, who is five years old in the beginning of the story. From the first chapter, we clearly see that Scout is remembering and telling this story much more later, When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to Jems accident". Moreover, she is telling the story from the childhood perspective. This makes the narrative perspective an innocent. We get information, how Scout experienced all the events. Furthermore, we have an adult perspective, that gives us opportunity to understand important things that author makes sure that reader would realize .All the events happen in a novel in a chronological order recounted by Scout. The novel is divided in two parts. The First part of the novel, childish one bases on the games that Jem and Scout are playing and a mysterious puzzle of Boo Radley. The second part focuses on the adults game of Tom Robinson court case, where children understand the importance of a racial prejudice against Tom Robinson. Therefore we can clearly see that the Scouts mouthpiece that Harper Lee uses, keep the reader interested in the story due to two different perspectives, child one and adult. As a result the type narrative structure that
Harper Lee used, helps us to understand a social issue of racism.
In contrast to the narrative structure of To Kill A Mockingbird, in Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka, the tone as literary technique plays a prominent role in showing how close a social issue is to authors heart in a poem. The tone of the poem shows writers attitude towards reader or material he or she is writing about. It seems to sound hard and brutally in the same time due to the landladys racial prejudice. On the other hand, the tone of African-American seems to be intelligent as seen in the following sentence, Her assent was clinical, and even more polite when it comes to the end he still calls the landlady as Madam. The tone plays an important role in the line 27, when the landlady is asking her final question, THAT'S DARK. ISNT IT? Moreover, he continues to be polite and formal, and in the same time his tone seems almost sarcastic. This tone continues to be identical at line 30 when the man states that Friction caused/Foolishly madam by sitting down, has turned/My bottom raven black... Only after these words, he realizes that he said too much to landlady, and he encourages her patience before she hangs up. Then the tone comes back to a formal and polite. The poem ends with unanswered question, but implication is simply: she does not want to see an African- American man. No answer is even needed. The man realizes the landladys attitude towards him. Therefore, it gives an image to a reader about a racial prejudice against African-Americans.
From examining various aspects of different techniques that Harper Lee and Wole Soyinka used it could be said that they help us understand the social issue of racism within minority group that was happening years ago and now. They used completely different techniques in both texts such as repetition, symbolism, tone, etc. to show how close the social issue of racial discrimination is to their hearts. Both authors emphasized the high importance of the social issue of racial discrimination in their texts. However, it depends on individual to accept this social issue so close as authors did, because an issue of racial discrimination lies not within authors, it lies within us.
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