Past Exam Papers Q&A (Memos are at the end of the pack)
Test Questions (No answers – practice)
Poems and explanations (Detailed)
Covered:
In the Shadow of Signal Hill (Essop Patel)
WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER
In Exile (Arthur Nortje)
Still I rise (Maya Angelou)
Alexandra (Wally...
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The Loneliness Beyond
1. Whoor what is being compared to raindrops in the first stanza? What figure of
speech is used? What is the effect of the comparison?
2.
The speaker compares the raindrops to class working people, or cattle. He observes the
commuters/cattle/humans arriving. The working class are just like cattle. Slowly at first but
then, much like raindrops that begin to intensify before a heavy downpour, "as a torrent". The
speaker uses a simile to create the effect of rushing of people on a train station (like herding
cattle into their post) and being forced to do work (let the cattle eat to produce food.).
3. Inthe second line of the second stanza, the speaker talks about a ‘single maskless face’.
What is he referring to? Why do you
think the poet chose this image (what idea does the image convey)?
The speaker is referring to a communal loss of identity under the exhausting demands of the
white system and reinforces the dissonance between black subjectivity and urban landscapes.
The images here seem to evoke a homogenous, undifferentiated mass, a “single maskless
face”; the black body is mechanized by the white state as a labouring object. Sepamla’s stress
on the workings of the black body (palpitating hearts, clicking tongues, laughter, and grousing
mouths) asserts its humanity.
4. Who do you think issues the ‘commands’ that the speaker refers to in the last line of the
second stanza?
The white state as a labouring object.
5. In
stanza three, the speaker talks about ‘grinding complaints’ (line 13). This is a rather
odd choice of diction (or odd choice of words). What tone (mood or atmosphere) is
evoked by this choice of diction?
The tone changes to desire to escape and anger. It is never ending although the poet wants it to
end. The poem works against the reduction of black selfhood by gesturing towards its multiple
meanings. The train’s trajectory may be limited and circumscribed within the linear movement
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