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Question
What is the poetic technique used by the poet to convey the plaintive theme of the poem?
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Solution
Refugee Blues is a Blue Ballad. A form that defines his character. Ballads were popular in Ireland and Britain till the 18th century while Blues were popular in African-Americans that originated at the end of the 19th century. Auden, a British migrated to the USA, blends the two techniques to bring out this beauty that sings the sorrows and sufferings of Jewish Refugees. The metre used in the poem is the same he used in his poem 'Calypso', written around the same time, the 1930s. While Ballads were popular medieval forms of narrative verse while Blue is an African-American music genre that has a rigid pattern concerning the use of repetitions and a simple rhyme scheme. In the poem, the first two lines of every stanza rhyme with each other, a tercet, while the third line draws a repetitive pattern, with the phrase “my dear” being repeated in every third line giving a unique uniformity to the poem. It is interesting to note that the first word of every stanza is a verb. The poem is a first-person narrative, in a colloquial and informal language.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Read the following extract and then do all the activities that follow :
I rain into a stranger as he passed by
“Oh, excuse me please” was my reply.
He said, “please excuse me too; wasn't even watching for you.”
We were very polite, this stranger and I.
We went on out way and we said good-bye.
But at home a different story is told.
How we treat out loved ones, young and old.
Later that day, cooking the evening meal,
My daughter stood beside me very still.
When I turned, I nearly knoked her down.
“Move out of the way,” I said with a frown.
She walked away, her little heart broken.
I didn't realize how harshly I'd spoken.
While I lay awake in bed,
God's still small voice came to me and said,
“While Dealing with a stranger, common courtesy you use,
But children you love, you seem to abuse.”
A1. Order-
The incidents narrated in the extract are arranged in a jumbled manner here, Rearrange them in a proper order as they occur in the extract:
(i) The poet and the stranger went on their way saying good-bye.
(ii) Seeking excuse politely from the stranger, she went her way.
(iii) The poet ran into a stranger on the road.
(iv) The poet yelled at her daughter.
A2. Poetic device:
Make a list of rhyming pairs from the second stanza and note down the rhyme scheme of the same stanza.
A3. Personal Response:
Understanding and politeness are the essentials of out everyday life. Explain your views in brief.
A4. Creativity -
Frame two poetic lines on the following situation using a rhyming pattern with the help of clues given:
“While introducing great personalities, we praise them highly and talk about their qualities, but while speaking
about our friends we may not follow the same trend.”
While introducing great personalities, — a
------------------------------------ — a
But while speaking about our friends, — b
------------------------------------ — b
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(a) ................................. (b) ................................ |
| 2. | Peter Stockmann | (a) ................................. (b) ................................ (c) ................................. |
(a) ................................. (b) ................................ (c) ................................. |
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(a) ................................. (b) ................................ |
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|
How doth the little busy bee |
How doth the little crocodile (parody) |
| Choice of a subject (an animal) | __________________ |
| __________________ | __________________ |
| Number of lines and stanzas | __________________ |
| __________________ | __________________ |
| Same or similar constructions | __________________ |
| __________________ | __________________ |
| Tone of the poem | __________________ |
| __________________ | __________________ |
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| paid | un |
| send | dis |
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The Sherpas were nomadic people who first migrated from Tibet approximately 600 years ago, through the Nangpa La pass and settled in the Solukhumbu District, Nepal. These nomadic people then gradually moved westward along salt trade routes. During 14th century, Sherpa ancestors migrated from Kham. The group of people from the Kham region, east of Tibet, was called “Shyar Khamba”. The inhabitants of Shyar Khamba, were called Sherpa. Sherpa migrants travelled through Ü and Tsang, before crossing the Himalayas. According to Sherpa oral history, four groups migrated out of Solukhumbu at different times, giving rise to the four fundamental Sherpa clans: Minyagpa, Thimmi, Sertawa and Chawa. These four groups have since split into the more than 20 different clans that exist today
Sherpas had little contact with the world beyond the mountains and they spoke their own language. AngDawa, a 76-year-old former mountaineer recalled “My first expedition was to Makalu [the world’s fifth highest mountain] with Sir Edmund Hillary’’. We were not allowed to go to the top. We wore leather boots that got really heavy when wet, and we only got a little salary, but we danced the Sherpa dance, and we were able to buy firewood and make campfires, and we spent a lot of the time dancing and singing and drinking. Today Sherpas get good pay and good equipment, but they don’t have good entertainment. My one regret is that I never got to the top of Everest. I got to the South Summit, but I never got a chance to go for the top.
The transformation began when the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and the New Zealander Edmund Hillary scaled Everest in 1953. Edmund Hillary took efforts to build schools and health clinics to raise the living standards of the Sherpas. Thus life in Khumbu improved due to the efforts taken by Edmund Hillary and hence he was known as ‘Sherpa King’.
Sherpas working on the Everest generally tend to perish one by one, casualties of crevasse falls, avalanches, and altitude sickness. Some have simply disappeared on the mountain, never to be seen again. Apart from the bad seasons in 1922, 1970 and 2014 they do not die en masse. Sherpas carry the heaviest loads and pay the highest prices on the world’s tallest mountain. In some ways, Sherpas have benefited from the commercialization of the Everest more than any group, earning income from thousands of climbers and trekkers drawn to the mountain. While interest in climbing Everest grew gradually over the decades after the first ascent, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the economic motives of commercial guiding on Everest began. This leads to eclipse the amateur impetus of traditional mountaineering. Climbers looked after each other for the love of adventure and “the brotherhood of the rope” now are tending to mountain businesses. Sherpas have taken up jobs as guides to look after clients for a salary. Commercial guiding agencies promised any reasonably fit person a shot at Everest.
