Sample essay: The poem I have chosen for comparison is 'Not My Business'. Like 'Vultures . it is written by a Nigerian poet and set in Africa. However, in both cases the African setting simply provides a background for events that could take place in many other countries around the world. Both poems protest about the way in which human beings treat each other, but they do so in different ways, using different techniques such as structure, vocabulary and poetic voice.
The protest made in these poems makes me wonder why humans behave the way they do. How can the commandant in Achebe's poem go shopping for chocolate with the smell of 'human roast' still 'clinging rebelliously to his hairy nostrils'? This horrifying image makes me feel the protest strongly. In a similar way, Osundare, when he writes about 'they'- the violent people who casually pick up Akanni one morning - makes me react strongly to the words 'beat him softly like clay'.
English: Alexander Blok's poem 'Noch, ulica, fonar...
English: What kind of poem did Hafez make?
A spiral stack of copies of the 1994 Anchor Books ...Again the distressing image of someone being beaten senseless as though he weren't a human being is very disturbing. The fact that the Belsen commandant is identified in one poem and the victim has a name in the other, helps to reinforce the protest because it becomes personal and specific.
Both poems also protest against the basic survival instinct of human beings, showing how they can be cowardly and corrupt. Achebe's poem tells the reader to 'despair' because 'kindred love, love of the family can be infected with the 'germ' allowing the perpetuity of evil'. Similarly, Osundare thinks that eating just to survive can become a weak and cowardly act, as his poem suggests that there are people who will let anything happen to others, 'so long as they don't take the yam.'...