Explain 'laugh with their teeth'
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When the poet says now they only laugh with their teeth he means that people now when they do laugh they only laugh for the sake of laughing and not out of real happiness, and then he goes on to say 'while their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow' , by using a metaphor the writer says that the person who is ...
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This poem ‘Once upon a time’ was written by a Nigerian poet known as Gabriel Okara. Gabriel Okara was born in 1921 in Nigeria. The poet was highly self sophisticated and did not get influenced by other poets around at the time. Gabriel’s poems would hold very great sensitivity, perceptive judgements and tremendous energy. Gabriel Okara was brilliant at changing the moods of people with his poems.
‘ONCE UPON A TIME’ is a poem consisting of seven stanzas each containing between four and eight lines. The title of this poem ‘Once upon a time’ straight away makes you feel as if you are going back in time, it also makes you feel as if what happened was a fairy tale and it will never happen again. I think that the poet has used this title to make the reader feel as though what he will read i.e. what he experienced will never happen again and when a person reads the title it will make him feel as if he is about to read fairy tale.
In stanza one Gabriel Okara writes ‘Once upon a time, son’ , so when he writes son it shows that he is talking to his son or someone who is younger than him likely to be in his childhood days. He then writes ‘they used to laugh with their hearts, and laugh with their eyes’, by saying ‘used to’ shows that it happened in the past and does not happen now and he says that before people would laugh with their hearts and would really laugh out of happiness but now ‘they only laugh with their teeth, while their ice-block-cold eyes, search behind my shadow’. When the poet says now they only laugh with their teeth he means that people now when they do laugh they only laugh for the sake of laughing and not out of real happiness, and then he goes on to say ‘while their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow’ , by using a metaphor the writer says that the person who is laughing laugh with his/her eyes as cold and as solid as ice and there is no happiness what so ever inside the persons eyes while they search behind his shadow as in they look right past him without paying any attention to him whatsoever. Stanza one summed up is talking about when he was young when people would laugh with their hearts and how people have changed to laugh without happiness and to ‘fake laugh’ while their cold eyes would be dead with grief.
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