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Summary Nightsong City by Dennis Brutus - Analysis
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Full explanation and analysis of Nightsong City by Dennis Brutus
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Nightsong CityDennis Brutus
1. Sleep well, my love, sleep well:
- “:” indicates list circumstances will follow under which “love” must sleep
- Starts by wishing speaker’s “love” to sleep well
- Implied “love” is the land (as mentioned in descriptions of places)
2. the harbour lights glaze over restless docks,
- “Harbour lights” creates peaceful image that one will associate with “sleep”
- “Glaze” personification : when person’s eyes glaze over, means they seized listening /
concentrating. Personifies harbour lights as looking out without emotion
- “Docks” describes as “restless” : conveys atmosphere
- Contrasts peaceful image in first part of line (an peaceful sleep) as lights from
harbour
- Creates sinister image of violence
3. police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;
- “Cockroach” verb : suggests police move in menacing way as patrol the street
- Hinting potential police brutality / violence
- Implies speaker feels police unwelcome in shanty towns
- Like pests, unhygienic, unwelcome
- “Tunnel streets” describes narrow, dark street which patrolled by police cars /
narrow chance escape
- IMAGERY : creates subtle suggestion of conflict, danger & violence
4. from the shanties creaking iron-sheets
- “Shanties” : South African townships
- “Creaking” : onomatopoeia
- Shanties built from “iron-sheets” = poverty
5. violence like a bug-infested (compound adjective) rag is tossed
- Sense of menace confirmed as “violence” emanates from “shanties” “tossed” like a
“bug-infested rag”
- Simile : comparing violence that erupts from rag infested with bugs = disruption
- “Cockroach” = common but unwanted
- Highlights fact that living conditions unsanitary
6. and fear is immanent as sound in the wind-swung bell;
- Speaker hears creaking due to wind
- Also hears sounds fear which “immanent” in township
- Simile : persistent fear as common sound of bell caught in wind
- Fear as real / tangible as sound ringing bell
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