‘Once Upon A Time’ and ‘Were I to Choose’

                         Name :- Nargis Ibrahimbhai Saiyad

                                            Roll no: - 13

                                    Class: - M.A. Sem.-IV

                               Paper: - African Literature

            Topic: -  ‘Once Upon A Time’ and ‘Were I to Choose’

                                        -:Submitted to:-

                                          Heenaba Zala,

                                        Dept. of English,

                           M.K. Bhavnagar University,

                                              Bhavnagar.   

         ‘Once Upon A Time’ and ‘Were I to Choose’

# Gabriel Okara-

                                                             Gabriel Okara is one of the most significant and serious early Nigerian poets. The motifs of childhood, innocence and nostalgia run through many of his poems. He is often concerned about the identity of African people.

# ‘Once Upon A Time’-

·       Theme:   

                                                        This is an emotional poem in which the father laments the innocence of youth.

·       Content and structure:

                                                      A grown up man’s adult world has lost the charm of his childhood years. After becoming young, they forget how to laugh with hearts. It is shown in the poem in this line,

                            “they used to laugh with their hearts”

                                                                    He used to sense people’s insincerity and their superficial laughs, because

                       “but now they only laugh with their teeth”

                                                                    It is a vicious circle: once someone has entered the adult world, he will be changed- then change others.

                               “I have also learned to say, ‘Goodbye’,

                                     When I, mean ‘Good- riddance’”

                                                            He now can play the adult role without any problem. However, once he became a parent, parent hood seems to have helped him to remember the innocent world of his childhood. His son holds the key to this old, forgotten world.

·       Important words/ phrases:

ü “while their ice-block- cold eyes”

                                                      This is an example of a metaphor. It means that there is no warmth or real feeling in the words that they say, or how they behave.

ü “Unlearn all these muting things”

                                                    There is an implication that the insincere actions that the persona describes are muting, they block, or silence, good, intentions. Hence, the persona wants to ‘unlearn’ these habits.

·        Mood/ Atmosphere:

                                                          Here, the mood of this poem is nostalgic. The persona is remembering how things used to be when he was young and innocent, like his son.

·       Tone:

                                                    The tone of the poem is sad. The poet’s response to his nostalgia is sadness.

·       Thematic cataloging:

 -death.

 - desire/dreams,

- loss of innocence,

-hypocrasy,

-childhood experiences

   

                       

·       Irony:

                                                        It is ironic that the persona is behaving in the exact way that he/she despises. Thus, he condemns the hypocrisy of adults- hemmed in and constrained by rules and conventions- adopting masks for different occasions: for lying, cheating and betraying – whereas childhood is portrayed as a time of honest laughter, and spontaneity.

# “were I to choose”-

·      Content and explanation:

“Were I to Choose” –reminiscent à Yeats’ “Adam’s Curse”

                                                       Adam’s toiling in the soil can be compared to the Negros working in the soil. They broke the stone themselves which was their very foundation. The red streams are symbolic of multilingual diversity that reaches the womb Africa. These lines present it,

         

                                “When Adam broke the stone

                              and red streams raged down to

                                        gather in the womb”

                            

                                                  Cain metaphorically represents the next generation. ‘I’ in Okara’s poems generally refers to the tribe. This lines talks about Cain,

                                 “in Cain, unblinking gaze”

                                                     The earlier generation’s gaze would not go beyond. Written in 1950, the period of Nigerian Independence, the poet sees his ancestors – their slavery, their groping lips, the breasts muted by heart – rendering suffering.

                                                            At the turn of 31 years, the poet is multi – lingual and he wonders what should be the medium of his instruction. The tower of Babel symbolizes unity.

                                “and thirty turns, the world

                                   Of bones is Babel, and”   

                                                      During the construction of the Tower of Babel, God cursed the people concerned. God despised the very fact there now remains no proper foundation, or structure and his world has deteriorated to a ‘world of bones.’

                                                    He wants free himself from the imprisonment of this dark halo. The poet likens his predicament with the Harmattan, a parching wind mingling with dust during the month Dec. to Feb. in Nigeria.

                                    “And when the harmattan

                                  of days has parched the throat”

                                                The colonial period has made him an amalgam of European and African cultures, and now he finds himself in a no man’s land. He relishes the idea of resolving the crisis by seeking refuge in the silence of the grave. He, then, would be even cheating the worms because he would enjoy that state of affairs.

# Okara’s language-

                       

                                         For his use of language, he says,

               

 “I have endeavored in my works to keep as close as possible to the vernacular expressions. For, from a word, a group of words, a sentence and even a name in any African language, one can glean the social norms, attitudes and values if a people.”

                        Okara’s remarks are clear. Contrary to the example of Nazi Boni, Okara’s writing is a conscious attempt to use the words and expressions in the way he has chosen. Both poems are famous and thus they show Okara’s potentiality in writing poems.