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6. Explain one of the following stanzas with reference to the context
(i) So show me, son
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
Once upon a time when I was like
you.
(ii) Suddenly I called to my mind my darling son-
How raptly did he listen to my bed-time tale last night :
When I told him of the agony of the oyster in her travails !
Answers
Answer:
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Answer:
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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