'Tellephone Conversatipn"
Submitted by FFE on 07/10/2008 11:54 PM
- Category: American History
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'Tellephone Conversatipn"
"Telephone Conversation"
"Telephone Conversation" is a poem that is written by Wole Soyinka in the 1960's. This poem is about an African man looking for an apartment in London, England. When this man calls her and tells her that he is African he gets silence as a response, as his response to this is to catagorize her into the typical white middle class person in London. The landlady asks him a question that is very negative to towards people of the other rase. The African man responds to this by trying to have her see him and this whole situation in another point of view. The message that Soyinka is trying to get across is that everybody categorizes other people, but there is a fine line between racism and acting like normal human beings.
When the African man calls the landlord she insists that she lives off premises, and he tells her right away that he is African so that if there would be a problem he would know right a way and not waste his time with her. After he tells her this it is followed with silence, this tells him that there might be a problem with him being African. One can get the impression that he does not like the reaction he has received because he ponders "Silence. Silenced transmission of Pressurized good breeding. Voice, when it came, Lipstick coated, long rolled Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully"(6-9). When he ponders this one gets the impression that he was caught off guard and that he assumes that it is a middle-class white English woman on the other line. From this the reader can see that he has categorized this woman with out even knowing or seeing her before. This is may not be racism, but it is defiantly assumption and categorization on his part.
After the African makes his assumption and is caught off guard by this reaction, the landlady asks him a very offensive question that can cause conflict between the two of them. Once the question "HOW DARK?...ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?" is asked by...
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