Telephone Conversation : Use of story and Express the Anger of  the Blacks 

 Telephone Conversation : Use of story and Express the Anger of  the Blacks 

Question : How does the poet make use of the story in this poem and express the anger of the Blacks ? 

Answer:  

The poem “Telephone Conversation” by  Wole Soyinka is not only a powerful criticism of the racial discrimination and prejudice but also it paints a picture of humiliation of the person who is subjected to be discriminated.

    The poem directly conveys the speaker’s feelings of anger, anxiety and bitterness through his detailed observation of his surroundings and sarcastic responses to the landlady’s questions about his skin colour.

   The poem is based on a conversation between the two person belonging to two different races. In this poem Soyinka captures the complicated and open form of racism through the conversation between a black man looking for an accommodation on rent and a white landlady.

    This incident related to the conversation develops like a story. By using this incident based story in the form of a poem, the poet expresses the feeling of shock, humiliation, embarrassment and anger of the black against racial discrimination and colour prejudice they have to face, in day – to – day life.

   The speaker in the poem is a black and exposes the attitude of the white people towards the blacks.

   At the beginning of the story, although he finds all the other things are appropriate while looking for a house on rent, he still feels the colour of his skin may cause some problem. So he decides to  “confess” his crime of being black, towards the white land lady. But her silence confuses him and makes him feel caught in an embarrassing situation and he says – 

   “Caught I was foully”

   But when she opens her mouth and asks – 

  “HOW DARK ……ARE YOU LIGHT / 

   OR VERY DARK ?…..”

      He feels so ashamed, shocked and  “dumbfounded” by her question that he could not believe as he heard it right about what she just asked. Then he feels the urgent need of “simplification”. He becomes speechless and he wants her to ask her question in a simplified manner and clearly.

    Then he finds the lady so “considerate” that she varies her “emphasis” and asks again – 

  “ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT ? “

      Here, Soyinka refers to the superficiality of her attitude and her consideration. She was nice enough to swap around the order of her words in the question. Here Soyinka employs irony and satire to convey the anger of the blacks towards the racial prejudice. A rage of anger came into his heart for the white landlady. He feels irritated annoyed and insulted by her questions. 

 The man at first remains polite and humble. But the moment he realises the woman’s derogatory attitude towards the black, he gets annoyed and starts responding in an ironical and sarcastic way.

     But the woman still remains rude, “clinical”, and impersonal towards the black man. He quotes it as – 

   ” Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light /

    Impersonality …..”

     As the conversation unfolds, it becomes a painful accumulation of ironic miscommunication and blatant racism. The more the speaker tries to answer the questions, the deeper the exchange slips into irony as the Speaker answers the woman with cool logic that clouds rather than clarifies the situation. 

   The speaker settles on describing himself as  “West  African sepia” , a term he knows will further confuse his listener. 

   Then he describes his colour as “brunette” facially brunette but palms of his hands and soles of his feet are  “peroxide blonde”. He tries to convince the lady that he is not altogether black and human body is not just a particular colour, but different body parts are of different colour. The speaker here is deliberately tongue – in – cheek in the comparisons are too far complex to be reduced to a simple, binary choice between dark or light  –  “Button B” or  “Button A”.

   The speaker does not just criticise the landlady’s action but also the way she thinks about race itself. His responses, filled with sarcasm and unexpected analogies expose the dehumanising effects of racism and the resentment felt by the blacks subjected to such discrimination.

    The man’s sarcastic replies are his way to protest against the racial discrimination and prejudice based on colour of the skin of some individuals. 

This way the poet has successfully developed an incident like a story and used it to express the anger of the blacks against the discrimination they face routinely.