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Summary Portrait of a Loaf of Bread by Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali - Analysis
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Portrait of a Loaf of BreadOswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali
1. Look back to the rolling fields
2. waving gold-topped wheat stalks
- Sense of pastoral idyll here
- ‘Look back’ encourages reader to reminisce as images of abundance & fertility
portrayed
- Mood is calm
3. mowed by the reaper’s scythe,
- Literal : simply harvesting of wheat
- Figurative : poet brings to mind the Grim Reaper who harvests souls
- Allusion links to theme of exploitation of workers runs through poem
4. bundled into sheaves
5. carted to the mill
6. and ground into flour.
7. Kneaded into mountains of dough
8. to be churned by rollers
- “Dough” & “rollers” money, the wealthy people
9. and spat into pans as red hot
10. as Satan’s cauldron.
- Nightmarish mood in stark contrast to peacefulness at start of stanza
- Shift happens undermines mood at start
- Makes one wonder whether first two lines were parody
11. Brought to the café,
- Workers involved in production still unnamed in first stanza
12. warmly wrapped in cellophane,
13. by ‘Eat Fresh Bread’ bakery van;
14. for the waiting cook
15. to slice and toast
16. to butter and to marmalade
17. for the food-bedecked breakfast table.
18. Whilst the labourer
19. with fingers caked with
- “Cake” worker will know is the dried cement on his hand
- Not have time to wash off in his quick break from work
20. wet cement of builder’s scaffold
21. mauls a hunk and a cold drink
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